Mr Pettiligall on the Floating Island ofNewhury Port. 59 



sed. In this cave we find no marks of the rude yet grand 

 conceptions which produced the sculptures to be found scat- 

 tered over India ; instead of drawing forth, with a bold hand, 

 the statue from the living marble, those who dedicated this 

 cave filled it with gaudily painted and gilded alabaster images, 

 which do not harmonize with the bold outline of the rock, or 

 the gloomy grandeur of the interior. In this country no flut- 

 ed columns or graceful pillars adorn the plain, or add digni- 

 ty to the approach to the shrine of the Burman Idol. 



8. Account of the Floating Island of Newbury Port. By Mr 

 Amos Pettingall Jun. From Dr Silliman's Journal, No. 

 XXV. p. 122. 



That a few floating reeds, upon a pond, should collect to- 

 gether, and adhere with sufficient compactness to sustain small 

 pieces of earth and decayed shrubs and plants, and thereby 

 exhibit small clumps of vegetables moving on the water, is not 

 surprising ; but that islands of any magnitude should be found 

 in this vagrant state, has ever been considered a subject of 

 considerable curiosity. Passing over the mythological fiction 

 of the floating Delos, as founded upon questionable evidence, 

 and the island of Chemmis, with those called the Cyanean, 

 reported as floating, by the less doubtful testimony of Hero- 

 dotus, the first of which history gives a minute and circum- 

 stantial account, are those in Lake Vadimon, near Rome, (now 

 called Lago de Bassanello,) described by Pliny major and Se- 

 neca. Pliny the younger, in the 20th Letter of his 8th Book, 

 gives a very interesting description of the same, in which he 

 mentions the circumstance of sheep, which, while grazing, im- 

 perceptibly fell upon some of these islands, lying on the bor- 

 ders of the lake, and were carried off* by the wind, and borne 

 to the opposite shore. It is also asserted by Boethius, that in 

 I^ch Lomond there were floating islands upon which cattle 

 graze. A few small ones, of the same description, are said to 

 exist in a lake in the province of Honduras in America. 



The island which I am about to describe is situated near- 

 ly one mile south of the market-house in Newburyport, about 

 two stones' cast from what is called Old-Town meeting-house, 

 in a pond in the rear of the adjoining burying-ground. Its 

 length averages about 140 feet, and its breadth 120, contain- 



