ANCIKM COAST- C1IAK UES. 
n 
we may concei e the central elevated plain of Spain resisting 
the efforts of these great inundations, till the draining of the 
■waters, by the straits formed between the pillars of Hercules, 
brought the Mediterranean progressively to its present level, 
lower Egypt emerging above its surface on the one side, and 
the fertile plains of Tarragona, Valencia, and Murcia, on tbe 
other. Everything that relates to tbe formation of that sea,* 
which lias had so powerful an influence on tbe first civilization 
of mankind, is highly interesting. We might suppose, that 
Bpain, forming a promontory amidst the waves, was indebted 
for its preservation to the height of its land ; but in order 
to give weight to these theoretic ideas, wo must clear up 
the doubts that- have arisen respecting the rupture of so many 
^ n3 . vel se dikes — we must discuss the probability ot the 
Mediterranean having been formerly divided into several 
separate basins, of which Sicily and tlio island of Candia ap- 
pear to mark the ancient limits. Wo will not here risk the 
solution of these problems, but will satisfy ourselves in fixing 
attention on the striking contrast in the configuration of the 
land in the eastern and western extremities of Europe. 
Between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the ground is at 
present scarcely fifty toises above the level of the ocean, while 
the plain of La Mancha, if placed between the sources of the 
Niemen and the Borysthenes, would figure as a group of 
mountains of considerable height. If the causes, which may 
have changed the surface of our planet, bo an interesting 
speculation, investigations of tho phenomena, such as they 
offer themselves to the measures and observations of the 
naturalist, lead to far greater certainty. 
From Astorga to Corunna, especially from Lugo, the 
* *' le ancient geographers believed that the Mediterranean, 
swelled by the waters of the JSuxine, the l’atus Masotis, the Caspian Sea, 
ana the Sea of Aral, had broken the pillars of Hercules; others ad. 
nutted that the irruption 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 Bordeaux, deter- 
mine the limit which the accumulation of the waters may have reached 
before the junction of tire Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, 
as well to the north of the Dardanelles, as to the east of this strip of 
land which formerly joined Europe to Mauritania, anil of which, in the 
time of Strabo, certain vestiges remained in the Islands of Juno and the 
Moon. 
