it has since that time sunk in such a manner, as | fire beneath. The water, upon dashing into the to be scarcely above water.+

sunk near Lemnos. Pliny mentions several; among others, the island Cea, for thirty miles, having been washed away, with several thousands of its inhabitants. But of all the noted devastations of this kind, the total submersion of the island of Atalantis, as mentioned by Plato, has been most the subject of speculation. Mankind, in general, now consider the whole of his account as an ingenious fable; but when fables are grown famous by time and authority, they become an agreeable, if not a necessary part of literary information.

"About nine thousand years are past," says Plato,10 "since the island of Atalantis was in being. The priests of Egypt were well-acquaint

Loubere informs us, in his voyage to Siam, that these sand-banks increase every day, at the mouths of all the great rivers in Asia; and hence, he asserts, that the navigation up these rivers becomes every day more difficult, and will, at one time or other, be totally obstructed. The same may be remarked with regard to the Wolga, which has at present seventy openings into the Caspian sea; and of the Danube, which has seven into the Euxine. We have had an instance of the formation of a new island not very long since at the mouth of the Humber, in England. "It is yet within the memory of man," says the relater,8 "since it began to raise its head above the ocean. It began its appearance at low water, for the space of a few hours, and was buried agained with it; and the first heroes of Athens gained till the next tide's retreat. Thus successively it much glory in their wars with the inhabitants. lived and died, until the year 1666, when it be- This island was as large as Asia Minor and Syria gan to maintain its ground against the insult of united; and was situated beyond the Pillars of the waves, and then first invited the aid of human | Hercules, in the Atlantic ocean. The beauty of industry. A bank was thrown about its rising the buildings, and the fertility of the soil, were grounds, and being thus defended from the in- far beyond any thing a modern imagination can cursions of the sea, it became firm and solid, and, conceive; gold and ivory were everywhere comin a short time, afforded good pasturage for mon; and the fruits of the earth offered themcattle. It is about nine miles in circumference, selves without cultivation. The arts, and the and is worth to the proprietor about eight hun-courage of the inhabitants, were not inferior to dred pounds a-year." It would be endless to the happiness of their situation; and they were mention all the islands that have been thus form-frequently known to make conquests, and overed, and the advantages that have been derived from them. However, it is frequently found, that new islands may often be considered as only turning the rivers from their former beds; so that in proportion as land is gained at one part, it is lost by the overflowing of some other.

Little, therefore, is gained by such accessions; nor is there much more by the new islands which are sometimes formed from the spoils of the continent.

Mariners assure us, that there are sometimes whole plains unrooted from the main lands, by floods and tempests. These being carried out to sea, with all their trees and animals upon them, are frequently seen floating in the ocean, and exhibiting a surprising appearance of rural tranquillity in the midst of danger. The greatest part, however, having the earth at their roots at length washed away, are dispersed and their animals drowned; but now and then some are found to brave the fury of the ocean, till being stuck either among rocks or sands, they again take firm footing, and become permanent islands. As different causes have thus concurred to produce new islands, so we have accounts of others that the came causes have contributed to destroy. We have already seen the power of earthquakes exerted in sinking whole cities, and leaving lakes in their room. There have been islands, and regions also, that have shared the same fate; and have sunk with their inhabitants, never more to be heard of. Thus Pausanias" tells us of an island, called Chryses, that was

7 Lettres Curieuses et Edifiantes, sec. ix. p. 234.
8 Phil. Trans. vol. iv. p. 251.
Pausanias, lib. viii. in Arcad. p. 509.

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run the continents of Europe and Asia. The imagination of the poetical philosopher riots in the description of the natural and acquired advantages, which they long enjoyed in this charming region. If," says he, we compare that country to our own, ours will appear a mere wasted skeleton, when opposed to it. Their mountains to the very tops were clothed with fertility, and poured down rivers to enrich the plains below."

However, all these beauties and benefits were destroyed in one day by an earthquake sinking the earth, and the sea overwhelming it. At present, not the smallest vestiges of such an island are to be found; Plato remains as the only authority for its existence; and philosophers dispute about its situation. It is not for me to enter into the controversy, when there appears but little probability to support the fact; and, indeed, it would be useless to run back nine thousand years in search of difficulties, as we are surrounded with objects that more closely affect us, and that demand admiration, at our very doors. When I consider, as Lactantius suggests, the various vicissitudes of nature; lands swallowed by yawning earthquakes, or overwhelmed in the deep; rivers and lakes disappearing, or dried away; mountains levelled into plains; and plains swelling up into mountains; I cannot help regarding this earth as a place of very little stability; as a transient abode of still more transitory beings.

10 Plato in Critia.

CHAP. XII.

OF MOUNTAINS.

HAVING at last, in some measure, emerged from the deeps of the earth, we come to a scene of greater splendour; the contemplation of its external appearance. In this survey, its mountains are the first objects that strike the imagination, and excite our curiosity. There is not, perhaps, anything in all nature that impresses an unaccustomed spectator with such ideas of awful solemnity, as these immense piles of Nature's erecting, that seem to mock the minuteness of human magnificence.

In countries where there are nothing but plains, the smallest elevations are apt to excite wonder. In Holland, which is all a flat, they show a little ridge of hills, near the sea-side, which Boerhaave generally marked out to his pupils, as being mountains of no small consideration. What would be the sensations of such an auditory, could they at once be presented with a view of the heights and precipices of the Alps or | the Andes ! Even among us in England, we have no adequate ideas of a mountain-prospect: our hills are generally sloping from the plain, and clothed to the very top with verdure: we can scarcely, therefore, lift our imaginations to those immense piles, whose tops peep up behind intervening clouds, sharp and precipitate, and reach to heights that human avarice or curiosity have never been able to ascend.

We, in this part of the world, are not, for that reason, so immediately interested in the question which has so long been agitated among philosophers, concerning what gave rise to these inequalities on the surface of the globe. In our own happy region, we generally see no inequalities but such as contribute to use and beauty; and we, therefore, are amazed at a question inquiring how such necessary inequalities came to be formed, and seeming to express a wonder how the globe comes to be so beautiful as we find it. But though with us there may be no great cause for such a demand, yet in those places where mountains deform the face of Nature, where they pour down cataracts, or give fury to tempests, there seems to be good reason for inquiry either into their causes or their uses. It has been, therefore, asked by many, in what manner mountains have come to be formed; or for what uses they are designed ?

To satisfy curiosity in these respects, much reasoning has been employed, and very little knowledge propagated. With regard to the first part of the demand, the manner in which mountains were formed, we have already seen the conjectures of different philosophers on that head. One supposing that they were formed from the earth's broken shell at the time of the deluge; another, that they existed from the

creation, and only acquired their deformities in process of time; a third, that they owed their original to earthquakes; and still a fourth, with much more plausibility than the rest, ascribing them entirely to the fluctuations of the deep, which he supposes in the beginning to have covered the whole earth. Such as are pleased with disquisitions of this kind, may consult Burnet, Whiston, Woodward, or Buffon. Nor would I be thought to decry any mental amusements, that at worst keep us innocently employed; but, for my own part, I cannot help wondering how the opposite demand has never come to be made; and why philosophers have never asked how we come to have plains? Plains are sometimes more prejudicial to man than mountains. Upon plains, an inundation has greater power; the beams of the sun are often collected there with suffocating fierceness; they are sometimes found desert for several hundred miles together, as in the country east of the Caspian sea, although otherwise fruitful, merely because there are no risings nor depressions to form reservoirs, or collect the smallest rivulet of water. The most rational answer, therefore, why either mountains or plains were formed, seems to be, that they were thus fashioned by the hand of Wisdom, in order that pain and pleasure should be so contiguous, as that morality might be exercised either in bearing the one, or communicating the other.

Indeed, the more I consider this dispute respecting the formation of mountains, the more I am struck with the futility of the question. There is neither a straight line, nor an exact superficies, in all nature. If we consider a circle, even with mathematical precision, we shall find it formed of a number of small right lines, joining at angles, together. These angles, therefore, may be considered in a circle as mountains are upon our globe; and to demand the reason for the one being mountainous, or the other angular, is only to ask, why a circle is a circle, or a globe is a globe. In short, if there be no surface without inequality in nature, why should we be surprised that the earth has such? It has often been said, that the inequalities of its surface are scarce distinguishable, if compared to its magnitude; and I think we have every reason to be content with the answer.

Some, however, have avoided the difficulty by urging the final cause. They allege, that mountains have been formed merely because they are useful to man. This carries the inquirer but a part of the way; for no one can affirm, that in all places they are useful. The contrary is known by horrid experience, in those valleys that are subject to their influence. However, as the utility of any part of our earthly habitation is a very pleasing and flattering speculation to every philosopher, it is not to be wondered that much has been said to prove the usefulness of these. For this purpose many.conjectures have been made, that have received a degree of assent even beyond

their evidence; for men were unwilling to be- | At a distance their tops are seen, in wavy ridges, come more miserably wise.

of the very colour of the clouds, and only to be distinguished from them by their figure; which, as I have said, resemble the billows of the sea.2 As we approach, the mountain assumes a deeper colour; it gathers upon the sky, and seems to hide half the horizon behind it. Its summits also are become distinct, and appear with a bro

It has been alleged, as one principal advantage that we derive from them, that they serve, like hoops or ribs, to strengthen our earth, and to bind it together. In consequence of this theory, Kircher has given us a map of the earth, in this manner hooped with its mountains; which might have a much more solid foundation, did it entire-ken and perpendicular line. What at first seemly correspond with truth.

Others have found a different use for them, especially when they run surrounding our globe; which is, that they stop the vapours which are continually travelling from the equator to the poles; for these being urged by the heat of the sun, from the warm regions of the line, must all be accumulated at the poles, if they were not stopped in their way by those high ridges of mountains which cross their direction. But an answer to this may be, that all the great mountains in America lie lengthwise, and therefore do not cross their direction.

ed a single hill, is now found to be a chain of continued mountains, whose tops running along in ridges, are embosomed in each other: so that the curvatures of one are fitted to the prominences of the opposite side, and form a winding valley between, often of several miles in extent; and all the way continuing nearly of the same breadth.

Nothing can be finer, or more exact, than Mr. Pope's description of a traveller straining up the Alps. Every mountain he comes to, he thinks will be the last; he finds, however, an unexpected hill rise before him; and that being scaled, he finds the highest summit almost at as great a distance as before. Upon quitting the plain, he might have left a green and fertile soil, and a climate warm and pleasing. As he ascends, the

But to leave these remote advantages, others assert, that not only the animal but vegetable part of the creation would perish for want of convenient humidity, were it not for their friendly assistance. Their summits are, by these, sup-ground assumes a more russet colour; the grass posed to arrest, as it were, the vapours which becomes more mossy, and the weather more mofloat in the regions of the air. Their large in- derate. Still as he ascends, the weather becomes flections and channels are considered as so many more cold, and the earth more barren. In this basins prepared for the reception of those thick dreary passage he is often entertained with a vapours, and impetuous rains, which descend in- little valley of surprising verdure, caused by the to them. The huge caverns beneath are so many reflected heat of the sun collected into a narrow magazines or conservatories of water for the spot on the surrounding heights. But it much peculiar service of man: and those orifices by more frequently happens that he sees only frightwhich the water is discharged upon the plain, ful precipices beneath, and lakes of amazing, are so situated as to enrich and render them depths; from whence rivers are formed, and fruitful, instead of returning through subter-fountains derive their original. On those places raneous channels to the sea, after the perfor-next the highest summits, vegetation is scarcely mance of a tedious and fruitless circulation.1

However this be, certain it is, that almost all our great rivers find their source among mountains; and, in general, the more extensive the mountain, the greater the river; thus the river Amazon, the greatest in the world, has its source among the Andes, which are the highest mountains on the globe; the river Niger travels a long course of several hundred miles from the Mountains of the Moon, the highest in all Africa; and the Danube and the Rhine proceed from the Alps, which are probably the highest mountains of Europe.

It needs scarcely be said, that, with respect to height, there are many sizes of mountains, from the gently rising upland, to the tall craggy precipice. The appearance is in general different in those of different magnitudes. The first are clothed with verdure to the very tops, and only seem to ascend to improve our prospects, or supply us with a purer air: but the lofty mountains of the other class have a very different aspect.

1 Nature Displayed, vol. iii. p. 88.

carried on; here and there a few plants of the most hardy kind appear. The air is intolerably cold; either continually refrigerated with frosts, or disturbed with tempests. All the ground here wears an eternal covering of ice, and snows that seem constantly accumulating. Upon emerging from this war of the elements, he ascends into a purer and a serener region, where vegetation is entirely ceased; where the precipices, composed entirely of rocks, rise perpendicularly above him; while he views beneath him all the combat of the elements; clouds at his feet, and thunders darting upward from their bosoms below.3 A thousand meteors, which are never seen on the plain, present themselves. Circular rainbows; mock suns; the shadow of the mountain projected upon the body of the air;5 and the traveller's own image reflected as in a looking-glass, upon the opposite cloud.

Such are, in general, the wonders that present

themselves to a traveller in his journey either | moschettoes, so that it was impossible to have one over the Alps or the Andes. But we must not moment's quiet. Those who had covered themsuppose that this picture exhibits either a con- selves with clothes made for this purpose, found stant or an invariable likeness of those stupen- not the smallest defence: wherefore, hoping to dous heights. Indeed, nothing can be more ca- find some relief in the open fields, we ventured pricious or irregular than the forms of many of out, though in danger of suffering in a more terthem. The tops of some run in ridges for a con-rible manner from the serpents. But both places siderable length, without interruption; in others, the line seems indented by great valleys to an amazing depth. Sometimes a solitary and a single mountain rises from the bosom of the plain; and sometimes extensive plains, and even provinces, as those of Savoy and Quito, are found embosomed near the tops of mountains. In general, however, those countries that are most mountainous, are the most barren and uninhabitable.