1(X) HISTOHY OF 



tains arc the first objects that strike the imagination, and excite 

 our curiosity. There is not, perhaps, any thing in ail nature 

 that impresses an unaccustomed spectator with sucli ideas of 

 awful solemnity, as these immense piles of Nature's erecting, 

 that seem to mock the minuteness of human magnificence. 



In countries where there are nothing but plains, the smallest 

 elevations are apt to excite wonder. In Holland, which is all a 

 flat, they show a little ridge of hills, near the sea-side, whicli 

 Boerhaave generally marked out to his pupils, as being moun- 

 tains 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 precipices 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 witn verdure : we can scarcely, there- 

 fore, lift our imaginations to those immense piles, whose tops 

 peep up behind intervening clouds, sharp and precipitate, and 

 reach to heights that human avarice or curiosity 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 generally see no inequalities but such as contribute 

 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 moun- 

 tains deform the face of nature, where they pour down cataracts, 

 or give fury to tempests, there seems to be good reason for in- 

 quiry either into their causes or their uses. It has been, thert- 

 fore, 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 Las 

 been employed, and very little knowledge propagated. Witli 

 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's broken shell at the time of the 



