they were anciently, fertile in tin ; nor are there any re- 

 mains of so many ancient workings as could maintain a 

 trade so greedily coveted by the ancients. But what is 

 vae of those mines] How shall this question he 

 answered, but by confessing that the land, in which they 

 were, is now sunk, and buried under the sea ? 



I am not fond of introducing earthquakes ; but where 

 there has been evidently a great subsidence of the 

 earth's surface, can it be accounted for at all without a 

 previous concussion of the earth ? And what nature 

 declares in this case, tradition seems to confirm; there 

 being a strong persuasion in the western parts of Corn- 

 wall, that formerly there existed a large country between 

 the Land'srEnd and Sciily, now laid many fathoms 

 under water. Indeed there are no evidences of any 

 ancient connexion of the Land's-End and Sciily. Yet 

 that the cause of that inundation, which destroyed much 

 of these islands, might reach also to the Cornish shores, 

 is extremely probable, there being several evidences of 

 a like subsidence of the land in Mouut's-Bay. The 

 principal anchoring-place, called a lake, is now a haven 

 or open harbour. The mount, from its Cornish name, 

 we must conclude to have stood formerly in a wood ; 

 but now at full tide, it is half a mile in the sea, and not 

 a tree near it; and in the sandy beach betwixt the 

 Mount and Peiizance, when the sands have been dis- 

 persed by violent high tides, there have been seen the 

 trunks of several large trees in their natural position, 

 the surface of their section worn smooth by the agita- 

 tion of the Water, sand, and gravel, as if cut with an 

 axe, upon which, at every full tide, there must be twelve 

 feet water; so that the shores in Sciily, and the neigh- 

 bouring shores of Cornwall are concurrent evidences of 

 such a subsidence, and the memory of the inundations, 

 which were, the necessary consequences of it, is preserved 

 in tradition: though like other traditions, in proportion 

 to their age, obscured by fable. 



That there has been such a subsidence of the lands 

 belonging to these islands, the present ruins of the 

 islands testify. And this subsidence reached even to 



