210 



twenty feet below the surface, all seem to demonstrate 

 this. I am informed that at Yorktovvn in Virginia, 

 in the bank of York river, there are different stra- 

 ta of shells and earth, one above another, which seem 

 to point out that the country there has undergone 

 several changes ; that the sea has, for a succession of 

 ages, occupied the place where dry land now appears; 

 and that the ground has been suddenly raised at vari- 

 ous periods. What a change would it make in the 

 country below, should the mountains at Niagara, by 

 any accident, be cleft asunder, and a passage suddenly 

 opened to drain off the waters of Erie and the upper 

 lakes! While ruminating on these subjects, I have of- 

 ten been hurried away by fancy, and led to imagine, 

 that what is now the bay of Mexico, was once a cham- 

 paign country ; and that from the point or cape of Flo- 

 rida there was a continued range of mountains through 

 Cuba, Hispaniola, Porte Rico, Martinique, Guadaloupe, 

 Barbadoes, and Trinidad, till it reached the coast of 

 America, and formed the shores which bounded the 

 ocean, and guarded the country behind ; that by some 

 convulsion or shock of nature, the sea had broken 

 through these mounds, and deluged that vast plain, till 

 it reached the foot of tlie Andes : that being there heap- 

 ed up by the trade winds, always blowing from one 

 quarter, it had found its way back, as it continues to 

 do, through the gulph between Florida and Cuba, car- 

 rying with it the loom and sand it may have scooped 

 from the country it had occupied, part of which it may 

 have deposited on the shores of North America, and 

 with part formed the banks of Newfoundland. But 

 these are only the visions of fancy. 



(3.) p. 35. There is a plant, or weed, called the 

 Jamestown weed,* of a very singuh r quality. The 

 late Dr. Bond informed me, that he had under his care 

 a patient, a young girl, who had put the seeds of this 

 plant into her eye, which dilated the pupil to such a 

 degree, that she could see in the dark, but in the light 



* Datura j)ericarpiis erectis ovatis, Linn. 



