40 



A HISTORY OF 



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 phi- 

 losophers 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 de- 

 mand admiration at our very doors. When 

 I consider, as Lactantius suggests, the va- 

 rious vicissitudes of nature ; lands swal- 

 lowed by yawning earthquakes, or over- 

 whelmed in the deep; rivers and lakes 

 disappearing, or dried away; mountains le- 

 velled into plains ; and plains swelling up 

 into mountains; I cannot help regarding this 

 earth as a place of every little stability; as 

 a transient abode of still more transitory 

 beings. 



CHAPTER XH. 



OF MOUNTAINS. 



HAVING at last, in some measure, emerg- 

 ed from the deeps of the earth, we come to a 

 scene of greater splendour; the contempla- 

 tion of its external appearance. In this sur- 

 vey, its mountains are the first objects that 

 strike the imagination, and excite our curio- 

 sity. There is not, perhaps, any thing in all 

 nature that impresses an unaccustomed spec- 

 tator with such ideas of awful solemnity, as 

 these immense piles of Nature's erecting, that 

 seem to mock the minuteness of human mag- 

 nificence. 



In countries where there are nothing but 

 plains, the smallest elevations are apt to ex- 

 cite wonder. In Holland, which is all a fiat, 

 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 pre- 

 cipices 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 scarce- 

 ly, therefore, lift our iin-.ginations to those 

 immense piles, whose tops peep up behind 

 intervening clouds, sharp and precipitate, and 

 reach to heights thit human avarice or curio- 

 sity 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 gene- 

 rally see no inequalities but such as contri- 

 bute 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 1 ? iiroken shell at the 

 time of the deluge ; another, that they exist- 

 ed from the creation, and only acquired their 



