ther towns and villages. Nor is it
unworthy of remark, surely, that one of the depressed steppes of this
peculiar region is known as the "Low Steppe of the Caucasus," and forms
no inconsiderable portion of the great recognized centre of the human
family. The Mount Ararat on which, according to many of our
commentators, the ark rested, rises immediately on the western edge of
this great hollow; the Mount Ararat selected as the scene of that event
by Sir Walter Raleigh, certainly not without some show of reason, lies
far within it. Vast plains, white with salt, and charged with sea
shells, show that the Caspian Sea was at no distant period greatly more
extensive than it is now. In an outer region, which includes the vast
desert of Khiva, shells also abound; but they seem to belong, as a
group, rather to some of the later Tertiary eras than to the recent
period. It is quite possible, however, that,--as on parts of the western
shores of our own country, where recent marine deposits lie over marine
deposits of the Pleistocene age, while a terrestrial deposit,
representative of an intervening paroxysm of upheaval, lies between,--it
is possible, I say, that in this great depressed area, the region
covered of old by a Tertiary sea, which we know united the Sea of Aral
with the Caspian, and rolled over many a wide steppe and vast plain, may
have been again covered for a brief period (after ages of upheaval) by
the breaking in of the great deep during that season of judgment when,
with the exception of one family, the whole human race was destroyed. It
seems confirmatory of this view, that during even the historic period,
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