Principles of Geology Part 65

Drifting of human bodies to the sea by river inundations--Destruction of bridges and houses--Loss of lives by s.h.i.+pwreck--How human corpses may be preserved in recent deposits--Number of wrecked vessels--Fossil skeletons of men--Fossil canoes, s.h.i.+ps, and works of art--Chemical changes which metallic articles have undergone after long submergence--Imbedding of cities and forests in subaqueous strata by subsidence--Earthquake of Cutch in 1819--Buried Temples of Cashmere--Berkeley's arguments for the recent date of the creation of man--Concluding remarks.

I shall now proceed to inquire in what manner the mortal remains of man and the works of his hands may be permanently preserved in subaqueous strata. Of the many hundred million human beings which perish in the course of every century on the land, every vestige is usually destroyed in the course of a few thousand years; but of the smaller number that perish in the waters, a certain proportion must be entombed under circ.u.mstances that may enable parts of them to endure throughout entire geological epochs.

The bodies of men, together with those of the inferior animals, are occasionally washed down during river inundations into seas and lakes.

(See pp. 726-728.) Belzoni witnessed a flood on the Nile in September, 1818, where, although the river rose only three feet and a half above its ordinary level, several villages, with some hundreds of men, women, and children, were swept away.[1079] It was before mentioned that a rise of six feet of water in the Ganges, in 1763, was attended with a much greater loss of lives. (See above, p. 278.)

In the year 1771, when the inundations in the north of England appear to have equalled the floods of Morays.h.i.+re in 1829, a great number of houses and their inhabitants were swept away by the rivers Tyne, Can, Wear, Tees, and Greta; and no less than twenty-one bridges were destroyed in the courses of these rivers. At the village of Bywell the flood tore the dead bodies and coffins out of the churchyard, and bore them away, together with many of the living inhabitants. During the same tempest an immense number of cattle, horses, and sheep, were also transported to the sea, while the whole coast was covered with the wreck of s.h.i.+ps. Four centuries before (in 1338), the same district had been visited by a similar continuance of heavy rains, followed by disastrous floods, and it is not improbable that these catastrophes may recur periodically, though at uncertain intervals. As the population increases, and buildings and bridges are multiplied, we must expect the loss of lives and property to augment.[1080]

_Fossilization of human bodies in the bed of the sea._--If to the hundreds of human bodies committed to the deep in the way of ordinary burial we add those of individuals lost by s.h.i.+pwrecks, we shall find that in the course of a single year, a great number of human remains are consigned to the subaqueous regions. I shall hereafter advert to a calculation by which it appears that more than five hundred _British_ vessels alone, averaging each a burthen of about 120 tons, are wrecked, and sink to the bottom, _annually_. Of these the crews for the most part escape, although it sometimes happens that all perish. In one great naval action several thousand individuals sometimes share a watery grave.

Many of these corpses are instantly devoured by predaceous fish, sometimes before they reach the bottom; still more frequently when they rise again to the surface, and float in a state of putrefaction. Many decompose on the floor of the ocean, where no sediment is thrown down upon them; but if they fall upon a reef where corals and sh.e.l.ls are becoming agglutinated into a solid rock, or subside where the delta of a river is advancing, they may be preserved for an incalculable series of ages.

Often at the distance of a few hundred feet from a coral reef, where wrecks are not unfrequent, there are no soundings at the depth of many hundred fathoms. Canoes, merchant vessels, and s.h.i.+ps of war, may have sunk and have been enveloped, in such situations, in calcareous sand and breccia, detached by the breakers from the summit of a submarine mountain. Should a volcanic eruption happen to cover such remains with ashes and sand, and a current of lava be afterwards poured over them, the s.h.i.+ps and human skeletons might remain uninjured beneath the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s, like the houses and works of art in the subterranean cities of Campania. Already many human remains may have been thus preserved beneath formations more than a thousand feet in thickness; for, in some volcanic archipelagoes, a period of thirty or forty centuries might well be supposed sufficient for such an acc.u.mulation. It was stated, that at the distance of about forty miles from the base of the delta of the Ganges there is an elliptical s.p.a.ce about fifteen miles in diameter, where soundings of from 100 to 300 fathoms sometimes fail to reach the bottom. (See above, p. 279.) As during the flood season the quant.i.ty of mud and sand poured by the great rivers into the Bay of Bengal is so great that the sea only recovers its transparency at the distance of sixty miles from the coast, this depression must be gradually shoaling, especially as during the monsoons, the sea loaded with mud and sand, is beaten back in that direction towards the delta. Now, if a s.h.i.+p or human body sink to the bottom in such a spot, it is by no means improbable that it may become buried under a depth of a thousand feet of sediment in the same number of years.

Even on that part of the floor of the ocean to which no accession of drift matter is carried (a part which probably const.i.tutes, at any given period, by far the larger proportion of the whole submarine area), there are circ.u.mstances accompanying a wreck which favor the conservation of skeletons. For when the vessel fills suddenly with water, especially in the night, many persons are drowned between decks and in their cabins, so that their bodies are prevented from rising again to the surface. The vessel often strikes upon an uneven bottom, and is overturned; in which case the ballast, consisting of sand, s.h.i.+ngle, and rock, or the cargo, frequently composed of heavy and durable materials, may be thrown down upon the carca.s.ses. In the case of s.h.i.+ps of war, cannon, shot, and other warlike stores, may press down with their weight the timbers of the vessel as they decay, and beneath these and the metallic substances the bones of man may be preserved.

_Number of wrecked vessels._--When we reflect on the number of curious monuments consigned to the bed of the ocean in the course of every naval war from the earliest times, our conceptions are greatly raised respecting the multiplicity of lasting memorials which man is leaving of his labors. During our last great struggle with France, thirty-two of our s.h.i.+ps of the line went to the bottom in the s.p.a.ce of twenty-two years, besides seven 50-gun s.h.i.+ps, eighty-six frigates, and a mult.i.tude of smaller vessels. The navies of the other European powers, France, Holland, Spain, and Denmark, were almost annihilated during the same period, so that the aggregate of their losses must have many times exceeded that of Great Britain. In every one of these s.h.i.+ps were batteries of cannon constructed of iron or bra.s.s, whereof a great number had the dates and places of their manufacture inscribed upon them in letters cast in metal. In each there were coins of copper, silver, and often many of gold, capable of serving as valuable historical monuments; in each were an infinite variety of instruments of the arts of war and peace; many formed of materials, such as gla.s.s and earthenware, capable of lasting for indefinite ages when once removed from the mechanical action of the waves, and buried under a ma.s.s of matter which may exclude the corroding action of sea-water. The quant.i.ty, moreover, of timber which is conveyed from the land to the bed of the sea by the sinking of s.h.i.+ps of a large size is enormous, for it is computed that 2000 tons of wood are required for the building of one 74-gun s.h.i.+p; and reckoning fifty oaks of 100 years growth to the acre, it would require forty acres of oak forest to build one of these vessels.[1081]

It would be an error to imagine that the fury of war is more conducive than the peaceful spirit of commercial enterprise to the acc.u.mulation of wrecked vessels in the bed of the sea. From an examination of Lloyd's lists, from the year 1793 to the commencement of 1829, Captain W. H.

Smyth ascertained that the number of _British vessels_ alone lost during that period amounted on an average to no less than one and a half _daily_; an extent of loss which would hardly have been antic.i.p.ated, although we learn from Moreau's tables that the number of merchant vessels employed at one time, in the navigation of England and Scotland, amounts to about twenty thousand, having one with another a mean burthen of 120 tons.[1082] My friend, Mr. J. L. Prevost, also informs me that on inspecting Lloyd's list for the years 1829, 1830, and 1831, he finds that no less than 1953 vessels were lost in those three years, their average tonnage being about 150 tons, or in all nearly 300,000 tons, being at the enormous rate of 100,000 tons annually of the merchant vessels of one nation only. This increased loss arises, I presume, from increasing activity in commerce.

Out of 551 s.h.i.+ps of the royal navy lost to the country during the period above mentioned, only 160 were taken or destroyed by the enemy, the rest having either stranded or foundered, or having been burnt by accident; a striking proof that the dangers of our naval warfare, however great, may be far exceeded by the storm, the shoal, the lee-sh.o.r.e, and all the other perils of the deep.[1083]

_Durable nature of many of their contents._--Millions of silver dollars and other coins have been sometimes submerged in a single s.h.i.+p, and on these, when they happen to be enveloped in a matrix capable of protecting them from chemical changes, much information of historical interest will remain inscribed, and endure for periods as indefinite as have the delicate markings of zoophytes or lapidified plants in some of the ancient secondary rocks. In almost every large s.h.i.+p, moreover, there are some precious stones set in seals, and other articles of use and ornament composed of the hardest substances in nature, on which letters and various images are carved--engravings which they may retain when included in subaqueous strata, as long as a crystal preserves its natural form.

It was, therefore, a splendid boast, that the deeds of the English chivalry at Agincourt made Henry's chronicle

----as rich with praise As is the ooze and bottom of the deep With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries

for it is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean, than will exist at any one time on the surface of the continents.

If our species be of as recent a date as is generally supposed, it will be vain to seek for the remains of man and the works of his hands imbedded in submarine strata, except in those regions where violent earthquakes are frequent, and the alterations of relative level so great, that the bed of the sea may have been converted into land within the historical era. We need not despair, however, of the discovery of such monuments, when those regions which have been peopled by man from the earliest ages, and which are at the same time the princ.i.p.al theatres of volcanic action, shall be examined by the joint skill of the antiquary and geologist.

_Power of human remains to resist decay._--There can be no doubt that human remains are as capable of resisting decay as are the harder parts of the inferior animals; and I have already cited the remark of Cuvier, that "in ancient fields of battle the bones of men have suffered as little decomposition as those of horses which were buried in the same grave." (See above, p. 147.) In the delta of the Ganges bones of men have been found in digging a well at the depth of ninety feet;[1084] but as that river frequently s.h.i.+fts its course and fills up its ancient channels, we are not called upon to suppose that these bodies are of extremely high antiquity, or that they were buried when that part of the surrounding delta where they occur was first gained from the sea.

_Fossil skeletons of men._--Several skeletons of men, more or less mutilated, have been found in the West Indies, on the north-west coast of the main land of Guadaloupe, in a kind of rock which is known to be forming daily, and which consists of minute fragments of sh.e.l.ls and corals, incrusted with a calcareous cement resembling travertin, by which also the different grains are bound together. The lens shows that some of the fragments of coral composing this stone still retain the same red color which is seen in the reefs of living coral which surround the island. The sh.e.l.ls belong to species of the neighboring sea intermixed with some terrestrial kinds which now live on the island, and among them is the _Bulimus Gaudaloupensis_ of Ferussac. The human skeletons still retain some of their animal matter, and all their phosphate of lime. One of them, of which the head is wanting, may now be seen in the British Museum, and another in the Royal Cabinet at Paris.

According to M. Konig, the rock in which the former is inclosed is harder under the mason's saw and chisel than statuary marble. It is described as forming a kind of glacis, probably an indurated beach, which slants from the steep cliffs of the island to the sea, and is nearly all submerged at high tide.

Similar formations are in progress in the whole of the West Indian archipelago, and they have greatly extended the plain of Cayes in St.

Domingo, where fragments of vases and other human works have been found at a depth of twenty feet. In digging wells also near Catania, in Sicily, tools have been discovered in a rock somewhat similar.

_Buried s.h.i.+ps, canoes, and works of art._--When a vessel is stranded in shallow water, it usually becomes the nucleus of a sand-bank, as has been exemplified in several of our harbors, and this circ.u.mstance tends greatly to its preservation. Between the years 1780 and 1790 a vessel from Purbeck, laden with three hundred tons of stone, struck on a shoal off the entrance of Poole harbor and foundered; the crew were saved, but the vessel and cargo remain to this day at the bottom. Since that period the shoal at the entrance of the harbor has so extended itself in a westerly direction towards Peveril Point in Purbeck, that the navigable channel is thrown a mile nearer that point.[1085] The cause is obvious; the tidal current deposits the sediment with which it is charged around any object which checks its velocity. Matter also drifted along the bottom is arrested by any obstacle, and acc.u.mulates round it, just as the African sand-winds, before described, raise a small hillock over the carca.s.s of every dead camel exposed on the surface of the desert.

I before alluded to an ancient Dutch vessel, discovered in the deserted channel of the river Rother in Suss.e.x, of which the oak wood was much blackened, but its texture unchanged. (See above, p. 316.) The interior was filled with fluviatile silt, as was also the case in regard to a vessel discovered in a former bed of the Mersey, and another disinterred where the St. Katherine Docks are excavated in the alluvial plain of the Thames. In like manner many s.h.i.+ps have been found preserved entire in modern strata, formed by the silting up of estuaries along the southern sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, especially in Pomerania. Between Bromberg and Nakel, for example, a vessel and two anchors in a very perfect state were dug up far from the sea.[1086]

Several vessels have been lately detected half buried in the delta of the Indus, in the numerous deserted branches of that river, far from where the stream now flows. One of these found near Vikkar in Sinde, was 400 tons in burthen, old fas.h.i.+oned, and pierced for fourteen guns, and in a region where it had been matter of dispute whether the Indus had ever been navigable by large vessels.[1087]

At the mouth of a river in Nova Scotia, a schooner of thirty-two tons, laden with live stock, was lying with her side to the tide, when the bore, or tidal wave, which rises there about ten feet in perpendicular height, rushed into the estuary, and overturned the vessel, so that it instantly disappeared. After the tide had ebbed, the schooner was so totally buried in the sand, that the taffrel or upper rail over the stern was alone visible.[1088] We are informed by Leigh that, on draining Martin Meer, a lake eighteen miles in circ.u.mference, in Lancas.h.i.+re, a bed of marl was laid dry, wherein no fewer than eight canoes were found imbedded. In figure and dimensions they were not unlike those now used in America. In a mora.s.s about nine miles distant from this Meer a whetstone and an axe of mixed metal were dug up.[1089]

In Ayrs.h.i.+re, also, three canoes were found in Loch Doon some few years ago; and during the year 1831 four others, each hewn out of separate oak trees. They were twenty-three feet in length, two and a half in depth, and nearly four feet in breadth at the stern. In the mud which filled one of them was found a war-club of oak and a stone battle-axe. A canoe of oak was also found in 1820, in peat overlying the sh.e.l.l-marl of the Loch of Kinnordy, in Forfars.h.i.+re.[1090]

_Manner in which s.h.i.+ps may be preserved in a deep sea._--It is extremely possible that the submerged woodwork of s.h.i.+ps which have sunk where the sea is two or three miles deep has undergone greater chemical changes in an equal s.p.a.ce of time, than in the cases above mentioned; for the experiments of Scoresby show that wood may at certain depths be impregnated in a single hour with salt water, so that its specific gravity is entirely altered. It may often happen that hot springs, charged with carbonate of lime, silex, and other mineral ingredients, may issue at great depths, in which case every pore of the vegetable tissue may be injected with the lapidifying liquid, whether calcareous or siliceous, before the smallest decay commences. The conversion, also, of wood into lignite is probably more rapid under enormous pressure. But the change of the timber into lignite or coal would not prevent the original form of a s.h.i.+p from being distinguished; for as we find, in strata of the carboniferous era, the bark of the hollow reed-like trees converted into coal, and the central cavity filled with sandstone, so might we trace the outline of a s.h.i.+p in coal; while in the indurated mud, sandstone, or limestone, filling the interior, we might discover instruments of human art, ballast consisting of rocks foreign to the rest of the stratum, and other contents of the s.h.i.+p.

_Submerged metallic substances._--Many of the metallic substances which fall into the waters probably lose, in the course of ages, the forms artificially imparted to them; but under certain circ.u.mstances these may be preserved for indefinite periods. The cannon enclosed in a calcareous rock, drawn up from the delta of the Rhone, which is now in the museum at Montpellier, might probably have endured as long as the calcareous matrix; but even if the metallic matter had been removed, and had entered into new combinations, still a mould of its original shape would have been left, corresponding to those impressions of sh.e.l.ls which we see in rocks, from which all the carbonate of lime has been subtracted.

About the year 1776, says Mr. King, some fishermen, sweeping for anchors in the Gulf stream (a part of the sea near the Downs), drew up a very curious old swivel gun, nearly eight feet in length. The barrel, which was about five feet long, was of bra.s.s; but the handle by which it was traversed was about three feet in length, and the swivel and pivot on which it turned were of iron. Around these latter were formed incrustations of sand converted into a kind of stone, of exceedingly strong texture and firmness; whereas round the barrel of the gun, except where it was near adjoining to the iron, there were no such incrustations, the greater part of it being clean, and in good condition, just as if it had still continued in use. In the incrusting stone, adhering to it on the outside, were a number of sh.e.l.ls and corallines, "just as they are often found in a fossil state." These were all so strongly attached, that it required as much force to separate them from the matrix "as to break a fragment off any hard rock."[1091]

In the year 1745, continues the same writer, the Fox man-of-war was stranded on the coast of East Lothian, and went to pieces. About thirty-three years afterwards a violent storm laid bare a part of the wreck, and threw up near the place several ma.s.ses, "consisting of iron, ropes, and b.a.l.l.s," covered over with ochreous sand, concreted and hardened into a kind of stone. The substance of the rope was very little altered. The consolidated sand retained perfect impressions of parts of an iron ring, "just as impressions of extraneous fossil bodies are found in various kinds of strata."[1092]

After a storm in the year 1824, which occasioned a considerable s.h.i.+fting of the sands near St. Andrew's, in Scotland, a gun-barrel of ancient construction was found, which is conjectured to have belonged to one of the wrecked vessels of the Spanish Armada. It is now in the museum of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, and is incrusted over by a thin coating of sand, the grains of which are cemented by brown ferruginous matter. Attached to this coating are fragments of various sh.e.l.ls, as of the common cardium, mya, &c.

Many other examples are recorded of iron instruments taken up from the bed of the sea near the British coast, incased by a thick coating of conglomerate, consisting of pebbles and sand, cemented by oxide of iron.

Dr. Davy describes a bronze helmet, of the antique Grecian form, taken up in 1825, from a shallow part of the sea, between the citadel of Corfu and the village of Castrades. Both the interior and exterior of the helmet were partially incrusted with sh.e.l.ls, and a deposit of carbonate of lime. The surface generally, both under the incrustation, and where freed from it, was of a variegated color, mottled with spots of green, dirty white, and red. On minute inspection with a lens, the green and red patches proved to consist of crystals of the red oxide and carbonate of copper, and the dirty white chiefly of oxide of tin.

The mineralizing process, says Dr. Davy, which has produced these new combinations, has, in general, penetrated very little into the substance of the helmet. The incrustation and rust removed, the metal is found bright beneath; in some places considerably corroded, in others very slightly. It proves, on a.n.a.lysis, to be copper, alloyed with 18.5 per cent. of tin. Its color is that of our common bra.s.s, and it possesses a considerable degree of flexibility.

"It is a curious question," he adds, "how the crystals were formed in the helmet, and on the adhering calcareous deposit. There being no reason to suppose deposition from solution, are we not under the necessity of inferring, that the mineralizing process depends on a small motion and separation of the particles of the original compound? This motion may have been due to the operation of electro-chemical powers which may have separated the different metals of the alloy.[1093]

_Effects of the Subsidence of Land, in imbedding Cities and Forests in subaqueous Strata._

We have hitherto considered the transportation of plants and animals from the land by _aqueous_ agents, and their inhumation in lacustrine or submarine deposits, and we may now inquire what tendency the subsidence of tracts of land may have to produce a.n.a.logous effects. Several examples of the sinking down of buildings, and portions of towns near the sh.o.r.e, to various depths beneath the level of the sea during subterranean movements, were before enumerated in treating of the changes brought about by _inorganic_ causes. The events alluded to were comprised within a brief portion of the historical period, and confined to a small number of the regions of active volcanoes. Yet these authentic facts, relating merely to the last century and a half, gave indications of considerable changes in the physical geography of the globe, and we are not to suppose that these were the only spots throughout the surrounding land and sea which suffered similar depressions.

If, during the short period since South America has been colonized by Europeans, we have proof of alterations of level at the three princ.i.p.al ports on the western sh.o.r.es, Callao, Valparaiso, and Conception,[1094]

we cannot for a moment suspect that these cities, so distant from each other, have been selected as the peculiar points where the desolating power of the earthquake has expended its chief fury. On considering how small is the area occupied by the seaports of this disturbed region--points where alone each slight change of the relative level of the sea and land can be recognized,--and reflecting on the proofs in our possession of the local revolutions that have happened on the site of each port, within the last century and a half,--our conceptions must be greatly exalted respecting the magnitude of the alterations which the country between the Andes and the sea may have undergone, even in the course of the last six thousand years.

_Cutch earthquake._--The manner in which a large extent of surface may be submerged, so that the terrestrial plants and animals may be imbedded in subaqueous strata, cannot be better ill.u.s.trated than by the earthquake of Cutch, in 1819, before alluded to (p. 460). It is stated, that, for some years after that earthquake, the withered tamarisks and other shrubs protruded their tops above the waves, in parts of the lagoon formed by subsidence, on the site of the village of Sindree and its environs; but, after the flood of 1826, they were seen no longer.

Every geologist will at once perceive, that forests sunk by such subterranean movements may become imbedded in subaqueous deposits, both fluviatile and marine, and the trees may still remain erect, or sometimes the roots and part of the trunks may continue in their original position, while the current may have broken off, or levelled with the ground, their upper stems and branches.

_Buildings how preserved under water._--Some of the buildings which have at different times subsided beneath the level of the sea have been immediately covered up to a certain extent with strata of volcanic matter showered down upon them. Such was the case at Tomboro in Sumbawa, in the present century, and at the site of the Temple of Serapis, in the environs of Puzzuoli, probably about the 12th century. The entrance of a river charged with sediment in the vicinity may still more frequently occasion the rapid envelopment of buildings in regularly stratified formations. But if no foreign matter be introduced, the buildings, when once removed to a depth where the action of the waves is insensible, and where no great current happens to flow, may last for indefinite periods, and be as durable as the floor of the ocean itself, which may often be composed of the very same materials. There is no reason to doubt the tradition mentioned by the cla.s.sic writers, that the submerged Grecian towns of Bura and Helice were seen under water; and it has been already mentioned that different eye-witnesses have observed the houses of Port Royal, at the bottom of the sea, at intervals of 88, 101, and 143 years after the convulsion of 1692. (p. 505.)

_Buried temples of Cashmere._--The celebrated valley of Cashmere (or Kashmir) in India, situated at the southern foot of the Himalaya range, is about 60 miles in length, and 20 in breadth, surrounded by mountains which rise abruptly from the plain to the height of about 5000 feet. In the cliffs of the river Jelam and its tributaries, which traverse this beautiful valley, strata consisting of fine clay, sand, soft sandstone, pebbles, and conglomerate are exposed to view. They contain freshwater sh.e.l.ls, of the genera Lymneus, Paludina, and Cyrena, with land sh.e.l.ls, all of recent species, and are precisely such deposits as would be formed if the whole valley were now converted into a great lake, and if the numerous rivers and torrents descending from the surrounding mountains were allowed sufficient time to fill up the lake-basin with fine sediment and gravel. Fragments of pottery met with at the depth of 40 and 50 feet in this lacustrine formation show that the upper part of it at least has acc.u.mulated within the human epoch.

Dr. Thomas Thomson, who visited Cashmere in 1848, observes that several of the lakes which still exist in the great valley, such as that near the town of Cashmere, five miles in diameter, and some others, are deeper than the adjoining river-channels, and may have been formed by subsidence during the numerous earthquakes which have convulsed that region in the course of the last 2000 years. It is also probable that the freshwater strata seen to extend far and wide over the whole of Cashmere originated not in one continuous sheet of water once occupying the entire valley, but in many lakes of limited area, formed and filled in succession. Among other proofs of such lake-basins of moderate dimensions having once existed and having been converted into land at different periods, Dr. Thomson mentions that the ruins of Avantipura, not far from the modern village of that name, stand on an older freshwater deposit at the base of the mountains, and terminate abruptly towards the plain in a straight line, such as admits of no other explanation than by supposing that the advance of the town in that direction was arrested by a lake, now drained or represented only by a marsh. In that neighborhood, as very generally throughout Cashmere, the rivers run in channels or alluvial flats, bounded by cliffs of lacustrine strata, horizontally stratified, and these strata form low table-lands from 20 to 50 feet high between the different watercourses.

On a table-land of this kind near Avantipura, portions of two buried temples are seen, which have been partially explored by Major Cunningham, who, in 1847, discovered that in one of the buildings a magnificent colonnade of seventy-four pillars is preserved underground.

He exposed to view three of the pillars in a cavity still open. All the architectural decorations below the level of the soil are as perfect and fresh-looking as when first executed. The s.p.a.cious quadrangle must have been silted up gradually at first, for some unsightly alterations, not in accordance with the general plan and style of architecture, were detected, evidently of subsequent date, and such as could only have been required when the water and sediment had already gained a certain height in the interior of the temple.

This edifice is supposed to have been erected about the year 850 of our era, and was certainly submerged before the year 1416, when the Mahomedan king, Sikandar, called Buts.h.i.+kan or the idol-breaker, destroyed all the images of Hindoo temples in Cashmere. Ferishta the historian particularly alludes to Sikandar having demolished every Cashmerian temple save one, dedicated to Mahadeva, which escaped "in consequence of its foundations being below the neighboring water." The unharmed condition of the human-headed birds and other images in the buried edifice near Avantipura leaves no doubt that they escaped the fury of the iconoclast by being under water, and perhaps silted up before the date of his conquest.[1095]

_Berkeley's arguments for the recent date of the creation of man._--I cannot conclude this chapter without recalling to the reader's mind a memorable pa.s.sage written by Bishop Berkeley a century ago, in which he inferred, on grounds which may be termed strictly geological, the recent date of the creation of man. "To any one," says he, "who considers that on digging into the earth, such quant.i.ties of sh.e.l.ls, and in some places, bones and horns of animals, are found sound and entire, after having lain there in all probability some thousands of years; it should seem probable that guns, medals, and implements in metal or stone, might have lasted entire, buried under ground forty or fifty thousand years, if the world had been so old. How comes it then to pa.s.s that no remains are found, no antiquities of those numerous ages preceding the Scripture accounts of time; that no fragments of buildings, no public monuments, no intaglios, cameos, statues, ba.s.so-relievos, medals, inscriptions, utensils, or artificial works of any kind, are ever discovered, which may bear testimony to the existence of those mighty empires, those successions of monarchs, heroes, and demi-G.o.ds, for so many thousand years? Let us look forward and suppose ten or twenty thousand years to come, during which time we will suppose that plagues, famine, wars, and _earthquakes_ shall have made great havoc in the world, is it not highly probable that at the end of such a period, pillars, vases, and statues now in being, of granite, or porphyry, or jasper (stones of such hardness as we know them to have lasted two thousand years above ground, without any considerable alteration), would bear record of these and past ages? Or that some of our current coins might then be dug up, or old walls and the foundations of buildings show themselves, as well as the sh.e.l.ls and stones of _the primeval world_, which are preserved down to our times."[1096]

That many signs of the agency of man would have lasted at least as long as "the sh.e.l.ls of the primeval world," had our race been so ancient, we may feel as fully persuaded as Berkeley; and we may antic.i.p.ate with confidence that many edifices and implements of human workmans.h.i.+p and the skeletons of men, and casts of the human form, will continue to exist when a great part of the present mountains, continents, and seas have disappeared. a.s.suming the future duration of the planet to be indefinitely protracted, we can foresee no limit to the perpetuation of some of the memorials of man, which are continually entombed in the bowels of the earth or in the bed of the ocean, unless we carry forward our views to a period sufficient to allow the various causes of change, both igneous and aqueous, to remodel more than once the entire crust of the earth. _One_ complete revolution will be inadequate to efface every monument of our existence; for many works of art might enter again and again into the formations of successive eras, and escape obliteration even though the very rocks in which they had been for ages imbedded were destroyed, just as pebbles included in the conglomerates of one epoch often contain the organized remains of beings which flourished during a prior era.

Yet it is no less true, as a late distinguished philosopher has declared, "that none of the works of a mortal being can be eternal."[1097] They are in the first place wrested from the hands of man, and lost as far as regards their subserviency to his use, by the instrumentality of those very causes which place them in situations where they are enabled to endure for indefinite periods. And even when they have been included in rocky strata, when they have been made to enter as it were into the solid framework of the globe itself, they must nevertheless eventually perish; for every year some portion of the earth's crust is shattered by earthquakes, or melted by volcanic fire, or ground to dust by the moving waters on the surface. "The river of Lethe," as Bacon eloquently remarks, "runneth as well above ground as below."[1098]