Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/341

Rh with the memory of local floods, such as are known to happen there. Dr. Szabó says that the Hungarians still preserve traditions of their plains having been once covered by a freshwater sea, the waters of which afterwards escaped through the narrows of the Iron Gate. The draining of the country in this manner is considered by Dr. Szabó as having really happened, so that this may be a case of tradition handing down the memory of a geological change from a very remote period. It would require a large body of scientific evidence of this character to make possible a thorough investigation of the Diluvial traditions of the world, and any attempt to draw a distinct line between the claims of History and Mythology must in the meantime be premature.

It fortunately happens that the difficulty in analysing the Diluvial traditions into their historical and mythological elements is one which only partially affects their use to Ethnology. Were they merely stories current in various parts of the world, saying little more than that there was once a great flood, or giving details only harmonizing within limited districts, they might be explained as independent Myths of Observation. But the general state of things found over the world is widely different from this. The notion of men having existed before this flood, and having been all destroyed except a few who escaped and re-peopled the earth, does not flow so immediately from the observation of natural phenomena that we can easily suppose it to have originated several times independently in such a way, yet this is a feature common to a great number of flood traditions. Still more strongly does this argument apply to the occurrence of some form of raft, ark, or canoe, in which the survivors are usually saved, unless, as in some cases, they take refuge directly on the top of some mountain which the waters never cover. The idea is indeed conceivable, if somewhat far-fetched, that from the sight of a boat found high on a mountain there might grow a story of the flood which carried it there, while the people in it escaped to found a new race. But it lies outside all reasonable probability to suppose such circumstances to have produced the same story in several different places, nor