luge
had destroyed all vegetation for the herbiverous animals, all flesh for
the carniverous. Not even a nibble was left for the sheep.

As for poor Noah, the first thing recorded of him after his watery
expedition is that he drank heavily of wine and got into a state of
beastly inebriation. And who can wonder that he did so? The poor old man
had floated about on oceans of water for more than a year, and probably
he was heartily sick of his watery prospect. The astonishing thing is
that he did not get water on the brain. It was quite natural that
he should swill deep potations of some stronger fluid on the first
available opportunity. Surely he had water enough during that twelve
months to last a lifetime; enough to justify his never touching the
wretched fluid again.

While Noah was dead drunk, his second son. Ham, saw "the nakedness
of his father," and reported the fact to his two brethren, who took a
garment and, walking backwards so that they might not see, covered
the patriarch's nudity. On recovering from his drunken stupor, Noah
discovered "what his younger son had done unto him," and proceeded at
once to vigorous cursing. Ham was the offender, if there was any offence
at all, which is not very clear; but punishment in the Bible is
generally vicarious, and we read that the irate patriarch cursed Canaan,
the son of Ham, for his father's misdemeanor. Flagitiously unjust as
it is, this proceeding thoroughly accords with Jehovah's treatment
of Adam's posterity after he and Eve had committed their first sin by
eating of the forbidden fruit.

Before Noah got drunk he had received from God the assurance that the
world should never more be destroyed by a flood. As a perpetual sign of
this covenant the rainbow was set in the heavens. But the rainbow
must have been a common sight for centuries before. This phenomenon of
refraction is the result of natural causes which operated before
the Flood, as well as after. The earth yielded its fruits for human
sustenance, and therefore rain must have fallen. If rain fell before the
Deluge, as we are bound to conclude, the rainbow must have been then as
now. The usual practice of commentators is to explain this portion
of the narrative by assuming that the rainbow was visible before
the covenant with Noah, but only after the covenant had a special
significance. But, as Colenso observes, the writer of the story
supposes the rainbow was then first set in the clouds, and is evidently