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are in the vulgar dialect pronounced C'ham and Sham.*

The traditions of the American aborigines are less full in their details, and tinctured with the rude notions of savage tribes, but still refer with sufficient distinctness to an event like that described in the Sacred History. I shall briefly adduce some of them.

In the island of Otaheite, some of the inhabitants gave in answer to inquiries respecting their origin, the following reply: A long time ago our Supreme God in anger dragged the earth through the sea. Our island was broken off and preserved.

The Peruvians believe in a general inundation, producing a universal destruction of the human race, with the exception of a few persons who were saved by fleeing to caves on the summit of mountains. In these caves they had previously placed a number of animals, and a store of provisions. Some say that only six persons were saved, -having placed themselves on a raft. They assign the date of the event to a populous era, before the first of their Incas, or Kings.

According to the Brazilian tradition, only one man and his sister were saved. Others, however, say, (for their traditions vary,) that two brothers and their wives were preserved. They escaped by climbing the highest trees on the loftiest mountains.

*Asiatic Researches, Vol. III. p. 67. "I do not know the meaning of the name Satyavarman, or Satyavrata, given to Noah, but I find his patronymic name in India was Vaivaswata, child of the Sun: also Menu Menuh; wherein we clearly trace the name Noah, or rather Nuech Heb. with the prefix Me as Manoah, Heb. Me Nuech. The name C'harma, pronounced C'ham, is exactly conformable to the Hebrew C'ham. Sharma, pronounced Sham, is like enough to Shem, and Jyápeti to Japheth."—Appendix to Calmet.

It is said that they celebrate the event in some of their religious songs.

The Mexicans affirm that their country was once entirely inundated. All the inhabitants were destroyed. It was repeopled by Viracocha, who came out of the lake Titicaca. The tradition of the Mechoacans, a people who lived in the vicinity of Mexico, was, that in a great deluge only a single family was preserved. They entered an ark, with a number of animals sufficient to stock the world anew. Several ravens were sent out. One brought back the bough of a tree.*

The Iroquois say: A spirit, named Otkon, created the world. Another spirit, named Messou, repaired it, having been destroyed by a deluge. The deluge was occasioned by Otkon's dogs being lost one day, when he was hunting in a great lake. The lake was in consequence augmented, and overflowed its banks.

The tradition of the inhabitants of Hispaniola, I shall relate in the words of the elegant author of the life and voyages of Columbus. He says, "Like most savage nations, they had a tradition concerning the deluge. They said that there once lived in their island a mighty cacique, whose only son conspiring against him, he slew him. He afterwards. preserved his bones in a gourd, as was the custom of the natives with the remains of their friends. On a subsequent day, the cacique and his wife opened the gourd to contemplate the bones of their son, when, to their surprise, several fish leaped out. Upon this, the discreet cacique closed the gourd, and placed it on the top of his hut, boasting that he had the sea shut up within it, and could have fish whenever he pleased. Four brothers, however,

*ACOSTA, History of the Indies.

children of the same birth, and curious intermeddlers, hearing of this gourd, came during the absence of the cacique, to peep into it. In their carelessness, they suffered it to fall upon the ground, where it was dashed to pieces; when, lo! to their astonishment and dismay, there issued forth a mighty flood, with dolphins, and sharks, and tumbling porpoises, and great spouting whales; and the water spread until it overflowed the earth, and formed the ocean, leaving only the tops of the mountains uncovered, which are the present islands."*

I have thus spread out upon these pages the evidence corroborative of the Sacred History of the Deluge, afforded by some of the many traditions of the heathen world. The reader who has attentively perused it, will have drawn his own inferences. Whence, he has said to himself, this universal concurrence? May it be ascribed to particular inundations, which have destroyed, with a few exceptions, the inhabitants of every country, and of which the memory has been transmitted from generation to generation? How, then, shall the coincidence in many of the details be accounted for? The piety of the chief personage preserved, -the number saved,-the ark,-the animals admitted into it, the birds sent out,—the green branch brought back,-which seems the most probable, that there has been one deluge embracing all these circumstances, or that there have been an infinity of deluges, corresponding with each other in these several respects? Which is the greater miracle? Which makes the greatest demands upon our faith? Whoever will adopt the latter supposition in preference to the former, must be indulged in his

IRVING'S Abridgement of his Life of Columbus, pp. 118-19.

opinion. Nothing can be said which will influence him. He stands in the position of one who denies the simplest principles.

Are all these several stories of a deluge, versions of some one original story, itself a fiction? It must indeed have been a very amusing fiction, that the whole race of man, for their violence and corruption, were overwhelmed by such a dreadful catastrophe, with the exception of one family, preserved for the extraordinary piety of its chief. It must have been made, too, while as yet the human race were not scattered abroad over the face of the earth. Otherwise, we cannot account for its diffusion. Early, then, in the history of the human race, some one devised the fable that the whole race had been destroyed by a mighty deluge. This fable made so deep an impression upon the minds of men, that as they were diffused abroad they carried it with them, and it afterwards gained credence as a fact, became a matter of record wherever there was a written language, and where there was none, it was transmitted from age to age by oral tradition.-Verily, the credulity of unbelief is greater than the faith of the believer. It will believe anything to escape from the simplicity of the truth.

In conclusion of this part of the subject, need I affirm, that all the accounts and traditions of a deluge, existing in all parts of the world, have their origin in one event, whose memory neither the power of time nor the dispersion of the human family over all the continents and islands of the earth, has been able to obliterate, that this is the only natural, the only satisfactory method of explaining their concurrence? However, notwithstanding this concurrence in many of the incidents of the heathen traditions with the Sacred History,

there is, in other incidents, and in the general aspect, a wide difference. In the heathen traditions, there appear extravagances and absurdities. Causes are assigned which are neither physically nor morally adequate to produce the effects ascribed to them. In the Sacred History, it is not the stealing of the sacred Vedas, nor the search for the lost waters of immortality, nor the losing of the hunter's dogs in the waters of a lake, but it is the incurable depravity of the human race,—a cause which, in illustrating that History, I have shown to be morally sufficient to require such a measure in the moral government of the world, as that of the general deluge. The difference, however, between the Sacred History and the heathen traditions, is better felt than described. Whoever will truly examine them for himself, will not fail to pronounce the former to be transparent, like the crystal stream of truth, with all the semblances of probability; while, in the latter, though he recognise truth, it will be truth adulterated with error.

CHAPTER VIII.

SACRED HISTORY OF THE DELUGE CORROBORATED BY GEOLOGY.

It is a very common idea among those who have not made the structure of the earth a subject of particular study, that the globe, as we now behold it, with its continents, and islands, its mountains, and its seas, was so formed by the hand of the Creator, when he first caused the waters to be gathered together, and bade the dry land appear. Or, if they have any notion of a change, that change has been slight, consisting in the washing

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