nfalls and rushes of water from the water-sheds of the
rivers, until the great animals were driven out or
destroyed, and man ceased to visit these parts. The
disturbances continued, the Strait of Dover was formed, the
configuration of the soft parts of the islands and
continents was fixed, action subsided, and the present state
of things obtained. Man resumed his residence, but with loss
of the mammoth and its companions. The reindeer now
constituted the type of a state of things which lasted down
to the historic period, without any other from that time to
this. * * *

"Chronologists are agreed that about 2000 years B.C. Abraham
migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and that at this time
Egypt at least was old in civilization. Beyond this we have
no positive scale of time in Scripture; for it is evident,
from the narrative itself, that the latter does not cover
the whole time. * * *

"Ussher estimates from Scripture the creation of man as
about 2000 years before this. During the latter portion of
this time civilization was proceeding under settled
governments in the East, interrupted, says the record and
tradition, by a flood. * * *

"So Lucretius:

'Thus, too, the insurgent waters once o'erpowered,
As fables tell, and deluged many a state;
Till, in its turn, the congregated waves
By cause more potent conquered, heaven restrain'd
Its ceaseless torrents, and the flood decreased.'

Barbarism covered the whole Western world; neither in the
2000 years before Abraham, nor in the 2000 years afterward,
have we any light reflected from these regions to the East.
In this 4000 years, or in the somewhat longer period which
probably will be ultimately settled as warranted by the
record, we place hypothetically all the phenomena of the
later mammalian age, including the introduction of man as a
hunter, the first occupation of the caves by him also, the
diluvial phenomena of the wide valleys, the oscillations and
disturbances of the earth's crust, alterations in the
coast-line, and physical settlement of the country; after
this comes the second occupation of the caves. In short, if
we say that, hypothetically, the whole first known human age
occurred within 4000 years of the Christian era, no one can
say