FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: In May 1849 the Tigris at Bagdad rose 22-1/2 feet--5 feet above its usual rise--and nearly swept away the town. In 1831 a similarly exceptional flood did immense damage, destroying 7000 houses. See Loftus, _Chaldea and Susiana,_ p. 7.] [Footnote 2: See the instructive chapter on Hasisadra's flood in Suess, _Das Antlitz der Erde,_ Abth. I. Only fifteen years ago a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal gave rise to a flood which covered 3000 square miles of the delta of the Ganges, 3 to 45 feet deep, destroying 100,000 people, innumerable cattle, houses, and trees. It broke inland on the rising ground of Tipperah, and may have swept a vessel from the sea that far, though I do not know that it did.] [Footnote 3: See Cernik's maps in _Petermanns Mittheilungen,_ Erganzungashefte 44 and 45, 1875-76.] [Footnote 4: I have not cited the dimensions given to the ships in most translations of the story, because there appears to be a doubt about them. Haupt (_Keilinschriftliche Sindfluth-Bericht,_ p. 13: says that the figures are illegible.)] [Footnote 5: It is probable that a slow movement of elevation of the land at one time contributed to the result--perhaps does so still.] [Footnote 6: At a comparatively recent period, the littoral margin of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250 miles farther to the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el Arab. (Loftus, _Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,_ 1853, p. 251.) The actual extent of the marine deposit inland cannot be defined, as it is covered by later fluviatile deposits.] [Footnote 7: Tiele (_Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschicthe,_ pp. 572-3) has some very just remarks on this aspect of the epos.] [Footnote 8: In the second volume of the _History of the Euphrates,_ p. 637 Col. Chesney gives a very interesting account of the simple and rapid manner in which the people about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum construct large barges, and make them water-tight with bitumen. Doubtless the practice is extremely ancient and as Colonel Chesney suggests, may possibly have furnished the conception of Noah's ark. But it is one thing to build a barge 44ft. long by 11ft. wide and 4ft. deep in the way described; and another to get a vessel of ten times the dimensions, so constructed, to hold together.] [Footnote 9: "Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit," _Maximen und Reflexionen,_ iii.] [Footnote 10: The well-known difficulties connected with this case have recently been carefully discussed by Mr. Bell in the _Transactions_ of the Geological Society of Glasgow.] [Footnote 11: An instructive parallel is exhibited by the "Great Basin" of North America. See the remarkable memoir on _Lake Bonneville_ by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, just published.] [Footnote 12: It is true that earthquakes are common enough, but they are incompetent to produce such changes as those which have taken place.]