at least one of the neighboring inland seas, though it belongs to a different system from that of the Caspian and the Aral, covered a vastly greater area than it does now,--a consequence, apparently, of a more considerable depression in the Caucasian region than at present exists. Herodotus, as quoted by Cuvier in his "Theory of the Earth," represents the Sea of Azoff as equal in extent to the Euxine. With the known facts, then, regarding this depressed Asiatic region before us, let us see whether we cannot originate a theory of the Deluge free from at least the palpable monstrosities of the older ones. Let us suppose that the human family, still amounting to several millions, though greatly reduced by exterminating wars and exhausting vices, were congregated in that tract of country which, extending eastwards from the modern Ararat to far beyond the Sea of Aral, includes the original Caucasian centre of the race: let us suppose that, the hour of judgment having at length arrived, the land began gradually to sink, as the tract in the run of Cutch sank in the year 1819, or as the tract in the southern part of North America, known as the "sunk country," sank in the year 1821: further, let us suppose that the depression took place slowly and equably for forty days together, at the rate of about four hundred feet per day,--a rate not twice greater than that at which the tide rises in the Straits of Magellan, and which would have rendered itself apparent as but a persistent inward flowing of the sea: let us yet further suppose, that from mayhap some volcanic outburst coincident with the depression, and an effect of the same deep seated cause, the atmosphere was so affected, that heavy drenching rains continued to descend during the whole time, and that, though they could contribute but little to the actual volume of the flood,--at most only some five or six inches per day,--they at least _seemed_ to constitute one of its main causes, and added greatly to its terrors, by swelling the rivers, and rushing downwards in torrents from the hills. The depression, which, by extending to the Euxine Sea and the Persian Gulf on the one hand, and to the Gulf of Finland on the other, would open up by three separate channels the fountains of the great deep, and which included, let us suppose, an area of about two thousand miles each way, would, at the end of the fortieth day, be sunk in its centre to the depth of sixteen thousand feet,--a depth sufficiently profound to bury the loftiest mountains of the district; and yet, having a gradient of declination of but sixteen feet per mile, the contour of its hills and plains would remain apparently what they had been before,--the doomed inhabitants would see but the water rising along the mountain sides, and one refuge after another swept away, till the last witness of the scene would have perished, and the last hill-top would have disappeared. And when, after