only covered
those parts of the earth that were occupied by him."_

The Bible states, however, that it was intended to destroy every thing
wherein was the breath of life; and your account and the Bible account
do not at all agree. But, if man was intended to be destroyed, the flood
must have been wide-spread. We know that Africa was occupied before that
time, and had been for thousands of years, by various races. We learn,
from the recent discoveries in the Swiss Lakes, that man was in
Switzerland before that time; in France, as Boucher's and Rigollet's
discoveries prove; in Great Britain, as the caves in Devonshire show; in
North America, as the fossil human skull beneath Table Mountain
demonstrates. Hence, for the flood to destroy man alone at so recent a
period, it must have been as wide spread as the earth.

Even according to the Bible account, the garden of Eden, where man was
first placed, was somewhere near the Euphrates; and in sixteen hundred
years the race must have rambled over a large part of the earth's
surface. The highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas, are within
two thousand miles of the Euphrates. That splendid country, India, would
have been occupied long before the time of the deluge; and, on the
flanks of the Himalayas, man could have laughed at any flood that
natural causes could possibly produce.

_"How do you account, then, for these traditions of a deluge that we
find all over the globe?"_

Nothing more easy. In all times floods have occurred; some by heavy and
long-continued rains, others by the bursting of lake-barriers or the
irruption of the sea; and wherever traditions of these have been met
with, men with the Bible story in their minds have at once attributed
their origin to the Noachian deluge.

_"But Jesus and the apostles indorse the account of the deluge."_

Granted; but does that transform a fable into a fact? They believed the
story just as our modern theologians believe it; because they were
taught it when they were children, and had not learned better. Jesus
says (Matt. xxv. 37-39), "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the
coming of the Son of man be. For, as in the days that were before the
flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the
flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son
of man be." If the man had regarded the story as false, he never w