_The Deluge._--Allowing the date of the Deluge to have been 3149 B. C. instead of 2349 B. C., still there is not sufficient time to repopulate the earth, and form those mighty empires recorded in ancient history. The Duke of Argyle has very justly remarked that, "The founding of a monarchy is not the beginning of a race. The people among whom such monarchies arose must have grown and gathered during many generations." The peopling of Egypt is not the only difficulty. "The existence, in the days of Abraham, of such an organized government as that of Chedorlaomer shows that two thousand years B. C. there nourished in Elam, beyond Mesopotamia, a nation which even now would be ranked among 'the Great Powers.'"[129] Then the characteristic features of the Negro, one of the most strongly marked among the varieties of man, were as greatly marked 2000 B. C. as at present. These statements lead to the conclusion that the Flood was not universal. Most nations have a tradition of a flood, but "the monuments of the two most ancient civilizations of which we have any knowledge--the Egyptian and Chinese--contain no account of, or allusion to, Noah's Deluge."[130] Many of these traditions doubtless refer to some local flood. The passages of Scripture seem to teach the universality of the Deluge, but the same expressions which convey the idea of universality, are sometimes used in a limited sense, and refer only to the Holy Land, and to bordering regions. The question is one of doubt whether or not the sacred historian means the Noachian Deluge to have been universal, or only a local cataclysm. _Monarchies._--The Scriptures do not state that Nimrod was the first monarch, but "the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh." Nor is the statement made that he founded these cities. He was a mighty hunter, and these cities were the _beginning of his kingdom_.