50 GEOGRAPHICAL AND LOCAL 



Asia and Africa, situated before the pillars of 

 Hercules, which after an earthquake was swal- 

 lowed up by the sea. According to his state- 

 ment, this account was given by the Egyptian 

 priests at Sais, to Solon, the Athenian legislator. 

 Catcott, in his history of the deluge, seems to give 

 some credit to this tradition, and supposes that 

 Phaleg took his name, not from the confusion of 

 tongues at Babel, and the subsequent division of 

 the earth amongst the families of the three sons 

 of Noah, but from its division occasioned by the 

 subsidence of this great island, by which the occi- 

 dental were separated from the oriental countries 

 of the globe. Philo Judaeus speaks of this catas- 

 trophe in terms that imply he gave credit to it, 

 as does also Tertullian ; but it appears to me to 

 rest on too uncertain a base, and to be too much 

 mixed with evident fable and allegory, to claim 

 full credit as a real fact in the history of our 

 globe. Still that many violent convulsions have 

 taken place since the deluge is generally sup- 

 posed. Our own island is thought once to have 

 formed part of the continent, Sicily to have been 

 united to Italy, with many other instances men- 

 tioned by Pliny. It is equally probable that the 

 islands of the Indian Archipelago were at one time 

 joined to that part of Asia. Whether such dis- 

 ruptions from the continents were simultaneous, 

 or took place at different periods, is uncertain ; 

 but if such an event as the submersion of the 



