21 



which has had so powerful an influence on the 

 first civilization of mankind, is highly interest- 

 ing. We might suppose, that Spain, forming a 

 promontory amidst the waves, was indebted for 

 it's preservation to the height of it's land ; but 

 in order to give weight to these systematic ideas, 

 we must clear up the doubts that have arisen 

 respecting the rupture of so many transverse 

 dikes; we must discuss the probability of the 



Halicarn. ed. Oxon. 1704, Lib. i, c. 61, p. 49. Aristot. Opp. 

 omn. ed. Casaub. Lugdun. 1590. Meteorolog. Lib. i, c. 14, 

 1. 1, p. 336. H. Strabo, Geogr. ed. Thomas Falconer. Oxon. 

 1807, t. 1, p. 76 et 83. (Tournefort, Voyage au Levant, 

 p. 124. Pallas, Voyage en Russie, t. v, p. 195. Choiseul- 

 Gouffier, Voyage pittoresque, t. ii, p. 116. Dureau de la 

 Malle, G£ographie physique de la Mer Noire, p. 157, 196, et 

 341. Olivier, Voyage en Perse, t. hi, p. 130. Meiners 

 iiber die Verschiedenheiten der Menschennaturen, p. 118.) 

 Some of the ancient geographers, such as Straton, Eratost- 

 henes, and Strabo, believed, that the Mediterranean, swelled 

 by the waters of the Euxine, the Palus Meotis, the Caspian 

 Sea, and the lake Aral, had broken the pillars of Hercules,; 

 others, such as Pomponius Mela, admitted, that the irrup- 

 tion was made by the waters of the ocean. In the first of 

 these hypotheses, the height of the land between the Black 

 Sea and the Baltic, and between the ports of Cette and Bour- 

 deaux, determines the limit, which the accumulation of the 

 waters may have reached before the junction of the Black 

 Sea, the Mediterranean, and th* Ocean, as well to the north 

 of the Dardanelles, as to the east of this strip of land, which 

 formerly joined Europe to Mauritania, and of which in the 

 time of Strabo certain vestiges remained in the Islands of Ju- 

 no and the Moon. 



