in a strange suspension
of the powers of thought.'"

_The Deluge._

"Nothing seems to be better substantiated and established than the
circumfusion of the waters of the deluge. The language of the Sacred
Volume is clear and decisive on this point. 'The waters prevailed
exceedingly on the earth; and all the high hills that were under the
whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters
prevail, and the mountains were covered.' The attestations to this fact,
in organic remains, are universal, and completely conclusive. In Italy
entire skeletons of whales have been found at an elevation of not less
than one thousand two hundred feet above the level of the Mediterranean.
In a letter of the 5th May, 1830, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, M.
Gerard states, that he had collected shells among the snowy mountains of
the frontiers of Thibet: some of them were obtained on the crest of a
pass, seventeen thousand feet above the level of the sea. Here were also
found fragments of rock, bearing impressions of shells, detached from
the contiguous peak rising far above the elevated level: generally,
however, it would appear, that the rocks from whence these shells were
collected, rise to an altitude of about sixteen thousand feet; one cliff
was no less than a mile in perpendicular height above the nearest level.
M. Gerard continues, 'Just before crossing the boundary of Sudak into
Bassalier, I was exceedingly gratified by the discovery of a bed of
fossil oysters clinging to the rock as if they had been alive.' No doubt
many of the rocks are in more sublime relief now, than they were in the
antediluvian world. The subsidence of the land and lower levels, and the
action of submarine currents would scoop out deep valleys; and no doubt,
much that is now 'dry land,' once formed the bed of the ocean. Alpine
structures have emerged from the deep, and volcanoes have heaped up
elevations on mountains already lofty and sublime; as Cotopaxi,
Antisana, and Tunguragua, amid the range of the Cordilleras of the
Andes. The Geological Society has a series of ammonites from India.
These fossils are objects of adoration to the Hindoos: they fall on the
S.W. side of the Himala mountains from an altitude which exceeds that of
perpetual congelation: they are picked up by the natives, and
religiously preserved, being concealed as much as possible from the
scrutiny of Europeans. Mont Perdu, among the Appennines, which rise to
an altitude o