1 (return)
[ In May 1849 the Tigris at Bagdad rose 22-1/2 feet—5 feet above its usual rise—and nearly swept away the town. In 1831 a similarly exceptional flood did immense damage, destroying 7000 houses. See Loftus, Chaldea and Susiana, p. 7.]

2 (return)
[ See the instructive chapter on Hasisadra's flood in Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde, Abth. I. Only fifteen years ago a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal gave rise to a flood which covered 3000 square miles of the delta of the Ganges, 3 to 45 feet deep, destroying 100,000 people, innumerable cattle, houses, and trees. It broke inland on the rising ground of Tipperah, and may have swept a vessel from the sea that far, though I do not know that it did.]

3 (return)
[ See Cernik's maps in Petermanns Mittheilungen, Erganzungashefte 44 and 45, 1875-76.]

4 (return)
[ I have not cited the dimensions given to the ships in most translations of the story, because there appears to be a doubt about them. Haupt (Keilinschriftliche Sindfluth-Bericht, p. 13: says that the figures are illegible.)]

5 (return)
[ It is probable that a slow movement of elevation of the land at one time contributed to the result—perhaps does so still.]

6 (return)
[ At a comparatively recent period, the littoral margin of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250 miles farther to the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el Arab. (Loftus, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1853, p. 251.) The actual extent of the marine deposit inland cannot be defined, as it is covered by later fluviatile deposits.]

7 (return)
[ Tiele (Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschicthe, pp. 572-3) has some very just remarks on this aspect of the epos.]

8 (return)
[ In the second volume of the History of the Euphrates, p. 637 Col. Chesney gives a very interesting account of the simple and rapid manner in which the people about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum construct large barges, and make them water-tight with bitumen. Doubtless the practice is extremely ancient and as Colonel Chesney suggests, may possibly have furnished the conception of Noah's ark. But it is one thing to build a barge 44ft. long by 11ft. wide and 4ft. deep in the way described; and another to get a vessel of ten times the dimensions, so constructed, to hold together.]

9 (return)
[ "Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit," Maximen und Reflexionen, iii.]

10 (return)
[ The well-known difficulties connected with this case have recently been carefully discussed by Mr. Bell in the Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow.]

11 (return)
[ An instructive parallel is exhibited by the "Great Basin" of North America. See the remarkable memoir on Lake Bonneville by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, just published.]

12 (return)
[ It is true that earthquakes are common enough, but they are incompetent to produce such changes as those which have taken place.]

13 (return)
[ See Teller, Geologische Beschreibung des sud-ostlichen Thessalien; Denkschriften d. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Bd. xl. p. 199.]

14 (return)
[ Dr. Langenbeck, Die Theorien uber die Entstehung der Korallen-Inseln und Korallen-Riffe (p. 13), 1890.]