' SACRED XS-LES IN WWW WEST. 4t 



.fyes can hardly bear it. This nption arose probatjly fiom the.'.s-li!r;ing 

 whiteness of jts cliffs, and strata of .chal.k:; which struck the ftmiarls 

 With admiration, as it appears frora Cicero's letters tQ ATTiiCUSi;; m 

 yvhich he calls these white cliffs, mirificm moles, whichj besides ?hat 

 property, have in themselves nothing very remarkable, Jt is pr.QljaMe 

 that cljalk was called creta in Latin, and the island of that name in 

 Qre^ce al^ounding also with chalk, from its shining whit^ .colour, or 

 ^hrita m Sanscrit. X.h^ ^sle of Crete, and its adjacent sea, are called 

 gkrita in the Purdn as, and ghrit or ghirit-adassi hy the Turks to this 

 day. But as ghrita in Sanscrit ij5 applied, for the same reason, to 

 ghee, or clarified butter, the Paurd files suppose, that its adjacent sea is 

 •entirely of ghee, and of course unctuous, as the author of the Trai-locya^ 

 derpan a says it is, 



.4s £shira, 'Sweta ^nd ghrita are synpnymoy^ tprrns, it is highly pro^ 

 bable thgit Englancl was called also Ghrita or Cr^ta ; .^nd indeed it is de-? 

 clared to be G/trz^ffl, .not as ^proper name, but as an epithet This pro^ 

 faably, and vanity also, iriduGecJ the Greeks to attribute to tJiQir own Creta, 

 Vv^hatever legends .Jjelon^ed -to the other ^,nd original Crfta.. Thus 'Sw eta 

 is represented floating at random on the surface of the oceaii like De^los; 

 and in my humble opinion it is the original Delos. Aii^©^ pj- a«a(^, in Greek, 

 signified originally, light, a lamp, resplendent, manifest, conspicuous as 

 light itself. The learned and ingenious Mr. Bailly was of opinion that 

 the primeval Belos did not belong to Greece, hut to the Hyperboreajis ; and 

 LuciAN ridicules the idea of those who asserted that Delos w^s a mass de- 

 tached from T'inacria or Tri-attddri, The Cretans asserted that Jupiter 

 was born in their island ; the Arcadians claimed the same honour. Accor- 

 ding tp others, he was only brought from some other co«mry, and coacea- 



