Chap. 88.] 
ELEYATIOTf OE LANDS. 
117 
surfaced Por the land is not merely produced by what is 
brought down the rivers, as the islands called Echinades are 
formed by the river Achelous, and the greater part of Egypt 
by the ~Nile, where, according to Homer, it was a day and a 
night's journey from the main land to the island of Pharos^ ; 
but, in some cases, by the receding of the sea, as, according 
to the same author, was the case with the Circsean isles". 
The same thing also happened in the harbour of Ambracia, 
for a space of 10,000 paces, and was also said to have taken 
place for 5000 at the Piraeus of Athens'^, and likewise at 
Ephesus, where formerly the sea washed the walls of the 
temple of Diana. Indeed, if we may believe Herodotus^, the 
sea came beyond Memphis, as far as the mountains of Ethi- 
opia, and also from the plains of Arabia. The sea also sur- 
rounded Ilium and the whole of Teuthrania, and covered the 
plain through which the Mseander flows ^. 
CHAP. 88. (86.) — THE MODE 11^ WHICH ISLANDS EISE UP. 
Land is sometimes formed in a different manner, rising 
suddenly out of the sea, as if nature was compensating the 
earth for its losses', restoring in one place what she had 
swallowed up in another. 
^ This phsenomenon is distinctly referred to by Seneca, ISTat. Quaest. 
vi. 21. It presents us with one of those cases, where the scientific de- 
ductions of the moderns have been anticipated by the speculations of the 
ancients. 
2 Odyss. iv. 354-357 ; see also Arist. Meteor, i. 14 ; Lucan, x. 509-511 ; 
Seneca, Nat. Qusest. vi. 26 ; Herodotus, ii. 4, 5 ; and Strabo, i. 59. 
3 These form, at this day, the Monte Circello, which, it is remarked, 
rises up hke an island, out of the Pontine marshes. It seems, however, 
difficult to conceive how any action of the sea could have formed these 
marshes. 
See Strabo, i. 58. ^ ii. 5. ef alihi. 
^ The plain in which this river flows, forming the windings from which 
it derives its name, appears to have been origmally an inlet of the sea, 
v/hich was gradually filled up with alluvial matter. 
7 " Paria secum faciente natura." This appears to have been a collo- 
quial or idiomatic expression among the Komans. See Hardouia in 
Lemaire, i. 412. 
