174 THE OCEAN. 
mind inconsistent with probability—that the state- 
ments of the ancients may be literally true; that 
by the action of an earthquake, of which we have 
had instances in modern times, the island may have 
been submerged, and that the Azores are the sum-, 
mits of the highest mountains. It seems somewhat 
to confirm this opinion, that these islands are evi- 
dently volcanic in their origin, and are very sub- 
ject to earthquakes,—nay, the very phenomenon of 
islands swallowed up by the sea has repeatedly oc- 
curred here within historical record. It is true, that 
in these instances the island itself was small, and 
had been but recently raised by volcanic action; 
‘but it does not seem necessary that in similar cases 
there should be an exact parallelism, either in size 
or duration. The last of these occurrences was 60 
remarkable on other accounts as to be well worthy of 
a detailed description, which is given by an eye-wit- 
ness, Captain Tillard, an officer of the British navy: 
“Approaching the island of St. Michael’s, on the 
12th June, 1811, we occasionally observed, rising in 
the horizon, two or three columns of smoke, such 
as would have been occasioned by an action between 
two ships, to which cause we universally attributed 
its origin. This opinion was, however, in a very 
short time changed, from the smoke increasing and 
ascending in much larger bodies than could possibly 
have been produced by such an event; and having 
heard an account, prior to our sailing from Lisbon, 
that in the preceding January or February a volcano 
had burst out within the sea near St. Michael’s, we 
immediately concluded that the smoke we saw pro- 
