in Paros.

They mention 1318 years since Cecrops ruled at Athens. These years were evidently reckoned backward from that in which Diognetus was Archon (264 B. C.). Sir Isaac Newton brings it down several centuries lower than the usual computation he places it forty-four years after the death of Solomon (931 B. C.). Homer certainly treats it more like an historical fact than as a fable, which gives the lower computation an air of probability.

209

CHAP. XIX.

SACRED MOUNTAINS IN ARMENIA, POLYNESIA,

ARABIA

INDIA, AFRICA, AND AMONG THE JEWS.- EXPLANATION OF PASSAGES IN EZEKIEL, XLVII. AND XLVIII. THE ARK OF THE COVENANT, AND THEIR HIGH PLACES.

In order to form a better judgment of the real origin and primary destination of those Celtic monuments before enumerated, it will be necessary to go back again to the cradle of the postdiluvian world, and to see how far the religion of succeeding ages was stamped with veneration for the mountain, whose lofty recesses were the harbour in which their ancestors tasted the first transports of deliverance from their long confinement, and from the perils of the destroying ocean. The surrounding nations have always attested their belief of that fact by the names which they have given to the mountain. The Persians call it Koh Nuh, the Mountain of Noah; the Turks call it Saad Depe, the Blessed Mountain: another name for it is Masis Thamanim1 the Mountain of the Eight; for Thaman is said in the ancient language of the country to signify eight, like the Hebrew Shaman. There is a town

1 One Mahometan tradition transfers the mountain to Kurdistan, and calls it Al Judi; a corruption probably from Giordi, the Gordiæan mountain; and there it places the village of Thamanîn, or the Eighty; for it is supposed that there were seventy-two believers besides the eight. Another tradition names Mount Masis twelve leagues S. E. of Erivan, called by the Turks Aghir Dagh, the Heavy or Great Mountain. Koran, xi. 46.

of the same name at the foot of the mountain, which is said to have been built by Noah: it must be the Cemainum of Rubruquis, which he interprets in the same sense; but, according to the natives, the true name of the mountain is Nachidshevan, the first place of descent and Le Clerc attributes the same etymology to Ararat.' The French monk, who travelled there about the middle of the thirteenth century, writes thus concerning it:-"There are two mountains on which they say the Ark of Noah rested-one greater than the other, and Araxes running at the foot of them: and there is a little town there, called Comanium, which is in their language eight; for they say it was so called of the eight persons, which came forth of the Ark, and built it. Many have attempted to climb the great hills and could not. A certain old man gave me this worthy reason why no one should climb it: they call that mountain Massis ; and as this word is of the feminine gender in their tongue, no man, said he, must climb up Massis, because it is the mother of the world."" Setting aside the puerile conceit about the gender, we see here the true reason why Demeter was worshipped in Greece, and Magna Mater by the Romans; and it is evident, that the two mountains were in reality two lofty peaks, or horns of one ridge. The traveller further relates, with all becoming gravity, that a certain monk, who was inconsolable at not being able to reach the spot, was comforted by an

1

17, the mountain of descent. for Samarit. i. 72. So Josephus says, that the Armenians called it arobaτńρiov.

2 Travels of William de Rubruquis in Harris's Collection, i. 588.

angel, who brought him a piece of the Ark, which was still preserved in an adjoining church. That the lovers of holy relics should lend a ready ear to such a tale, is nothing wonderful; but authors, who had no such predilections, have testified that its remains were visible in their days. Abydenus says, that the people of the country used to get some small pieces of the wood, which they carried about by way of amulet; and Berosus mentions, that they scraped off the Asphaltus, with which it had been covered, and used it in like manner for a charm. It may be they were deceived; but even their credulity proves that the tradition was firmly rooted in the belief of the natives, and that a peculiar sanctity was attributed to its remains. Bochart, therefore, needed not to go further than the Ark to discover his Armenian deity, entitled Baris; nor to perplex himself with discovering a cause for the same denomination being given to Ararat since it is infinitely reasonable, that the mountain, which bore the ark, should also bear its name. A remarkable analogy occurs in a remote quarter of the world, where no such analogy could have been expected-in one of the South Sea Islands. A mountain ridge has received the appellation of the Pahi, or ship of Hiro; and a large basaltic rock, near the summit of a mountain in Huahine, is

1 Bryant's Mythology, ii. 217.

2 '0 "Abos пaρà tòv Tňg Bápidos véwv.— Strabo, in Armeniæ Descript. lib. xi. De cætero nos latet, cur Baris vocetur ille mons, in quo substitit area; an a Græcis inditum nomen, apud quos Bápis barbari navigii genus est? aut ab Armeniis qui deam coluerunt hujus nominis? ·Boch. Geog. Sac. lib. i. c. 3.

called the Hoe, or paddle of Hiro. The history of this personage shows, that he was the Genius of the Ark for he was deemed a god of the ocean; and the most romantic accounts are given of his voyages, his combat with the god of the tempests, his descent to the depths of the ocean and intercourse with monsters there, by whom he was lulled to sleep in a cavern, while the gods of the winds raised a violent storm to destroy a ship, in which his friends were voyaging. Another version of the same story at Tahiti, or, as Captain Cook writes it, Otaheite, in some points more exact, but in others still deviating widely from the truth, is nevertheless sufficient to show, that a tradition of the Deluge had certainly reached Polynesia. The god Ruahatu, it is said, having declared that the land was criminal and should be destroyed, was moved by the penitence of a fisherman, who implored forgiveness, and told him to return for his wife and child, and proceed to a small island near Raiatea. He took with him a friend, a dog, and a pig, and a pair of fowls, the only domesticated animals in the islands. When they had reached the refuge appointed, the waters of the ocean began to rise. The inhabitants of the adjacent shore fled to the mountains, the tops of which, however, were covered by the rising waters, and all the inhabitants of the land perished. The ark, in which these individuals are said to have been preserved, is a small low coralline island, the highest parts of which are not more than two feet above the level of the

1 Ellis's Polynesian Researches, ii. 195.