2170. DELUGE, Mountain Shells and the.—
But such deluges as those will not account
for the shells found in the higher lands.
A second opinion has been entertained; which
is that, in times anterior to the records either
of history or tradition, the bed of the ocean,
the principal residence of the shelled tribe, has,
by some great convulsion of nature, been heaved
to the heights at which we now find shells and
other remains of marine animals. The favorers
of this opinion do well to suppose the great
events on which it rests to have taken place beyond
all the eras of history; for within these,
certainly, none such are to be found; and we
may venture to say farther, that no fact has
taken place, either in our own days, or in the
thousands of years recorded in history, which
proves the existence of any natural agents,
within or without the bowels of the earth, of
force sufficient to heave, to the height of 15,000
feet, such masses as the Andes. The difference
between the power necessary to produce such an
effect, and that which shuffled together the different
parts of Calabria in our days, is so immense,
that, from the existence of the latter we
are not authorized to infer that of the former.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 276.
Ford ed., iii, 118.
(1782)
