THE ORDEAL BY WATER. 



23 



mony to the uneasy condition of the land. This place was 

 once the strong-hold of France in America, and had one of 

 the finest harbors in the world. It was well fortified, and 

 had a population of twenty thousand souls within its walls. 

 It was destroyed during the French and Indian war, and 

 the inhabitants dispersed. But Nature had herself or 

 dained its abandonment. The rock on which the brave 

 General Wolfe landed has nearly disappeared. The sea 

 now flows within the walls of the city, and sites once in 

 habited have become the ocean s bed. In 1822 the entire 

 coast of Chili was elevated to a height varying from two 

 to seven feet an extent equal to the area of New England 

 and New York having been lifted up bodily. In 1831, an 



island, since called Graham s 

 Island, sprang from the bed of 

 the Mediterranean between Sic 

 ily and the site of ancient Car 

 thage. The island is now again 

 but a sunken reef. Another isl 

 and, as recently as 1866, rose 

 from the bottom of the Grecian 

 Archipelago, before the very 

 eyes of the American consul, 

 Mr. Canfield, bearing upon its 

 , Jaiy slimy back fragments of wrecks 

 that had been sunken in the lit 

 tle harbor of Santorin. Similar ocean-births had many times 

 previously been witnessed in the same vicinity. A hundred 

 and sixty-six years before our era the island of Hyera rose. 

 It was lifted successively higher by earthquake-throbs in 

 the years 19, 726, and 1427. In 1707 Nea-Kameni made 

 its appearance, and in 1773 Micra-Kameni. Even the an 

 cient islands of Santorin, Thrasia, and Aphronisi themselves 

 rose from the sea at the termination of an earthquake some 



18}1831 - 



