The upheaved
glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once
more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant;
and at length what we call the history of England dawned.
Thus you have within the limits of your own county, proof that the chalk
can justly claim a very much greater antiquity than even the oldest
physical traces of mankind. But we may go further and demonstrate, by
evidence of the same authority as that which testifies to the existence
of the father of men, that the chalk is vastly older than Adam himself.
The Book of Genesis informs us that Adam, immediately upon his creation,
and before the appearance of Eve, was placed in the Garden of Eden.
The problem of the geographical position of Eden has greatly vexed
the spirits of the learned in such matters, but there is one point
respecting which, so far as I know, no commentator has ever raised a
doubt. This is, that of the four rivers which are said to run out of it,
Euphrates and Hiddekel [73] are identical with the rivers now known by
the names of Euphrates and Tigris.
But the whole country in which these mighty rivers take their origin,
and through which they run, is composed of rocks which are either of the
same age as the chalk, or of later date. So that the chalk must not only
have been formed, but, after its formation, the time required for the
deposit of these later rocks, and for their upheaval into dry land, must
have elapsed, before the smallest brook which feeds the swift stream of
"the great river, the river of Babylon,"[74] began to flow.
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