THE HUMAN SPECIES. 147 



shingle, through which the waters percolate to the Indian 

 Ocean. 



On this side no other facts of interest are offered, excepting 

 the great volcanic spiracles, forming islands far out to the 

 south-east ; and a whole range of craters on the outside coast 

 of Madagascar, probably with submarine trunks that connect 

 them with the series on the main coast ; and the straits them- 

 selves, which, perhaps, were formed by the collapse of a part 

 of the Comoro Islands. 



Down the coast, to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence 

 along the western shores to Mauritania, no objects of a direct 

 interest to our present researches present themselves, excepting 

 those clusters of volcanic islands, with craters on peaks of very 

 great elevation, which were believed by the ancients, and by 

 many moderns admitted, to be the wrecks of the Atlantis, 

 recorded by the priests of Sais as the site of a fearful deluge, 

 which, it seems, was confounded with a similar event, already 

 recorded among the devastations of Greece. In the plains of 

 Morocco, among the high lands of Abyssinia, in the bed of the 

 Quorra (Niger), in Congo, and at the Cape of Good Hope, simi- 

 larly formed table mountains, with precipitous sides and lime- 

 stone summits, occur, and with deep valleys or flats between 

 them, produced by forces that cannot now be satisfactorily 

 explained. We may add, that while all the ancient adventi- 

 tious populations have greatly decreased, the indigenous npgro 

 races alone continue to expand. 



AMERICA. 



America, stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic Circfe, 

 has the great chain of cardinating mountains in the same 

 direction, with indications of far more awful convulsions than 

 are remarked on the old continent ; for here the nutations of 

 the great ridge, instead of influencing the continent, like the 

 Himalayas, with a gradual action upon their abutting planes, 



