A B Y 
entering the monument we meet with an immenfe hall, 
the root' of which is fupported by twenty-eight columns 
frxty-feet high and nineteen in circumference at the bate. 
They are 1 z feet diftant from each other. The enormous 
hones that form the ceiling, perfectly joined and incrufted, 
as it were, one in the other, offer to the eye nothing but one 
iolid platform of marble 126 feet long and twenty-fix wide. 
The walls are covered with hieroglyphics. One fees there 
a multitude of animals, birds, and human figures with 
pointed caps on their heads, and a piece of fluff hanging 
down behind, dreffed in loofe robes that come down only 
to the waifl. Among!! thefe we may diftinguifh fome wm- 
men fuckling their children, and men prefenting offerings 
to them. Here a!fo we meet with the divinities of India. 
Monfieur Chevalier, formerly governorof Chandernagore, 
who redded twenty years in that country, carefully vilited 
this monument on his return from Bengal. He remarked 
here the gods Jagrenet, Goncz, and Vechnou, or Wifnou, fuch 
as they are reprefented in the temples of Indoftan. A 
great gate opens at the bottom of the nrfthall, which leads 
to an apartment fortv-lix feet long by twenty-two wide. 
Six fquare pillars lupport the roof of it; and at the angles 
are the doors of four other chambers, but fo choaked up 
with rubbiih that they cannot now be entered. The lad 
hall, lixty-four feet long by twenty-four wide, has flairs by 
which one defcends into the fubterraneous apartments of 
this grand edifice. The Arabs, in fearching after trea- 
lure, have piled up heaps of earth and rubbifh. In the 
part we are able to penetrate, fculpture and hieroglyphics 
are difcoverable as in the upper ftory. The natives fay 
that they correfpond exaftly with thofe above ground, and 
that the columns are as deep in the earth as they are lofty 
above ground. It would be dangerous to go far into thofe 
vaults; for the air of them is fo loaded with a mephitic va- 
oour, that a candle can fcarce be kept burning in them. 
Six lions heads, placed on the two Tides of the temple, ferve 
as fpouts to carry off the water. You mount to the top by 
a ftaircafe of a very lingular ftruclure. It is built with 
flones incrufied in the wall, and projecting fix feet out; fo 
that being fupported only at one end, they appear to be 
fufpended in the air. 'lhe walls, the roof, and the co¬ 
lumns of this edifice, have fullered nothing from the inju¬ 
ries of time; and did not the hieroglyphics, by being cor¬ 
roded in fome places, mark its antiquity, it would appear 
to have been newly built. The folidity is fuch, that un- 
lefs people make a point of deftroying it, the building mull 
laft a great number of ages. To the left of this great 
building we meet with another much fmaller, at the bot¬ 
tom of which is a fort of altar. This was probably the 
fanctuary of the temple of Ofiris. 
ABYLA (Ptolemy, Mela); one of Hercules’s pillars on 
the African fide, called by the Spaniards Sierra de las 
Monas , over again!! Calpe in Spain, the other pillar; 
fuppofed to. have been formerly joined, but feparated by 
Hercules, and thus to have given entrance to the fea now 
called the Mediterranean: the limits of the labours of 
Hercules. Pliny. 
ABYSM, f \_abyfme, old Fr. now written contrafted- 
ly abime. ] A gulf; the fame with abyfs. 
My good Bars that were my former guides, 
Have empty left their orbs, and fhot their fires 
Into the abyfvi of hell. Shaltcfpeare. 
ABYSS , f. [ abyjjus , Lat. oc£v<rcr&, bottomlefs, Gr.] 
A depth without bottom. 
Thy throne is darknefs in th’ abyfs of light, 
A blaze of glory that forbids the fight; 
O teach me to believe thee thus conceal’d, 
And fearch no farther than thyfelf reveal’d. Dryden. 
A great depth, a gulf; hyperbolically.—The yawning eartli 
difclofed the abyfs of hell. Dryden. —In a figurative fenfe, 
that in which any thing is loft.—If, difeovering hc>v far 
we have clear and diftindl ideas, we confine our thoughts 
within the contemplation of thofe things that are within the 
A B Y 
reaeh of our underftandings, and launch npt out Into that 
abyfs of darknefs, out of aprefumption that nothing is be¬ 
yond our comprehenfion. Locke. —The body of waters 
fuppofed at the center of the earth.—We are here to con- 
fider what is generally underftood by the great abyfs, in 
the common explication of the deluge ; and it is common¬ 
ly interpreted either to be the fea, or fubterraneous waters 
hid in the bowels of the earth. Burnet. —In the language 
of divines, hell: 
That infatiable abyfs. 
Where flames devour, and ferpents hifs. Rofcommon. 
Dr. Woodward, in his Natural Hiiloryof the Earth, af- 
ferts, That there is a mighty collection of waters inclofed 
in the bowels of the earth, conflituting a huge orb in the 
interior or central parts of it; and over the furface of this 
water he fuppofes the terreflrial firata to be expanded. 
This, according to him, is what Moles calls the great deep, 
and what mof! authors render the great abyfs . The water 
of this vail abyfs, he alleges, does communicate with that 
of the ocean, by means of certain hiatufes or chafms paf- 
iing betwixt it and the bottom of the ocean: and this and 
the abyfs he fuppofes to have one common centre, around 
which the water of both is placed; but fo, that the ordi¬ 
nary furface of the abyfs is not level with that of the ocean, 
nor at fo great a diftance from the centre as the other, it 
being for the mof! part reftrainedand deprefled by the fira¬ 
ta of earth lying upon it: but wherever thofe firata are 
broken, or fo lax and porous that water can pervade them, 
there the water of the abyfs attends ; fills up all the clefts 
and fiffures into which it can get admittance; and fatu- 
rates all the interfiices and pores of the earth, ftone, or 
other matter, all around the globe, quite up to tire level of 
the ocean. 
The exiftence of an abyfs, or receptacle of fubterranc- 
ous waters, is controverted by Camerarius ; and defended 
by Dr. Woodward chiefly by two arguments : the firft 
drawn from the vaft quantity of water which covered the 
earth in the time of the deluge ; the fecond, from the con- 
fideration of earthquakes, which he endeavours to flrow 
are occafioned by the violence of the waters in this abyfs. 
A great part of the terreflrial globe has-been frequently 
fliaken at the fame moment; which argues, according to 
him, that the waters, which were the occafion thereof, were 
co-extended with that part of the globe. There are even 
inftances of univerfal earthquakes; which low, that the 
whole abyfs mull have been agitated; for fo general an ef¬ 
fect mull have been produced by as general a caufe, and 
that caufe can be nothing but the fubterraneous abyfs. 
To tlusabyfsalfo has been attributed the origin of fprings 
and rivers ; the level maintained in the fill-faces of differ¬ 
ent feas; and their not overflowing their banks. To the 
effluvias emitted from it, fome even attribute all the diver- 
lities of weather and change in our atmofphere. Ray, 
and other authors, ancient as well as modern, fuppofe a 
communication between the Cafpian Sea and the ocean by 
means of a fubterranean abyfs: and to this they attribute 
it that the Cafpian does not overflow, notwithflanding the 
great number of large rivers it receives, of which Keinp- 
fer reckons above fifty i n the compafs of fix ty miles; though, 
as to this, others fuppofe that the daily evaporation may 
fuffice to keep the level. 
The different arguments concerning this fubjedl maybe 
feen collected and amplified in Cockburn’s Inquiry into 
the Truth and Certainty of the Mofaic Deluge, p. 371, &c. 
After all, however, this amazing theory of a central abyfs 
is far from being demonftrated: it will perhaps in feveral 
refpedls appear inconfiftent with found phiiofophy, as well 
as repugnant to the phenomena of nature. In particu¬ 
lar, if we believe any thing like elective attraction to have 
prevailed in the formation of the earth, we muff believe 
that the feparation of the chaos proceeded from the union 
of fimilar particles. It is certain that reft is favourable to 
fuch operationsof nature. As, therefore, the central parts 
of the earth were more immediately quiefeent than thofe 
remote 
