South and North America; which, last, appears to have been detached from the other side of South America and caused to pass round into the north. The wonderful correspondence in the forms and positions of these great lines of coast cannot reasonably be accounted for in any other way. It is evident that America, that is, the Atlantis of the ancients, has been moved from off those coasts, to the situation it now occupies, and where it remained unknown to us until discovered by Columbus, in the fifteenth century. Passing round the Cape of Good Hope, the opposite coasts of Africa and Madagascar and New Holland, also correspond; as do, with wonderful precision, those of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The space between Norway and Denmark, with the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia, are also singularly illustrative of the tearing open of the land. Strabo remarks that Sicily and the other islands nearer the coast of Italy, were evidently once joined to it; and it is equally obvious that Britain was formerly continuous with the land of France.

Thus, we see that the circle of the earth has been destroyed, and that our continents and islands consist of its fragments: we are the inhabitants of the wreck of the former world. The earth having sunk down and retired within itself, so that its surface is now at a very great distance below the regions which are proper to it.

Now shall we be able to understand those very remarkable lines of the tenth and eleventh verses of the fourteenth chapter of the second book of Esdras: "For the world hath lost his youth, and the times begin to wax old. For the world is divided into

twelve parts, and ten parts of it are gone already, and half of a tenth part." Here it is declared that there is only one twelfth part and the half of a twelfth part of the world remaining; that is, as it appears, that there was, at the time alluded to, only so much of the formerly dry land then uncovered by water. Modern geographers inform us that at present, three parts of the surface of the earth are covered with water, and that one part only consists of dry land. This is indeed remarkable when we read in Scripture, that the earth was founded upon the seas, and established upon the floods: at present xxiv. we observe the reverse of this, the waters, instead of being beneath, are now above the land. Nature shows that a change has taken place, by which most of the land has become covered with water.

CHAPTER IV.

OF EARTHQUAKES.

IT has always been observed that earthquakes are most wont to occur in volcanic countries, and where nature is most active, or where the earth is in the most fertile and prolific condition; but that they are almost unknown in old worn-out desert regions, where volcanic operations have most completely ceased, and where nature is in a state of prostration, as in Upper Egypt, Arabia, and Asia Minor; as is also the case with thunder and lightning.

Continuously extensive stony concretions greatly distress the earth by the imprisonment of the subterranean vapours; hence all the stone formations which present themselves to our view, without exception, are found to be rent with numerous fissures, for the most part in a vertical direction, or at a gentle inclination from it, whereby the vapours may more freely pass upwards. This indiscriminate shattering of the rocks has been caused by earthquakes arising from the explosions of subterranean lightning. Thus it has always been found that whatever occasions an extensive hardening and condensation of the surface of the earth, so as to impede the passage upwards of the subterranean vapours, has at some time caused those subterraneous explosions, or subterraneous lightning, which is the cause of earthquakes, by the expansive force of whose irresistible efforts a loosening up and destruction of that hardened and impervious condition might be effected. Earthquakes

have always been wont to occur in cities from this cause; because the earth cannot bear such accumulated weights on its surface without sustaining injury; hence it has thus made exertions to get rid of the incumbrance they presented.

There is nothing more remarkable than the havoc which history shows has been made amongst cities by earthquakes. We read that in the time of Valens, the Roman Emperor, a hundred cities in Crete were destroyed by earthquakes, and all within a short time. In 1693, fifty-four cities and towns and a great many villages were destroyed in Sicily: this catastrophe included the celebrated Catania, which is said to have been overwhelmed in the short space of two minutes. It is related by Don Antonio de Ulloa that, in 1698, all the houses in the region of Quito, in South America, were thrown down by a terrible earthquake. And so late as 1783, two hundred towns and villages were destroyed by earthquakes in Calabria.

Whenever there has been an extensive prevalence The cause of earthquakes in cities, it has always been seen that of earthquakes. the same force has been vigorously employed in the agitation of rocky districts; and hills have usually been rent, rocks shattered and thrown down, and cities overwhelmed, when all the rest of the countries where they have happened have remained unaltered. Thus nature has always striven with elevated stony districts and cities, showing that they occasion a condition of the surface of the earth which is intolerable to her: that is, a condensed, impervious state, by which the passage upwards of that universal subterranean gaseous generation is opposed.

Plin. Hist. Nat. L. ii. c. 82.

Plin. Hist. Nat. L. xxxvi. c.

14.

This view of the cause of earthquakes is accordant with an observation of Pliny, who adverts to a fact noted in former times; namely, that cities in which there were many excavations were less liable to earthquakes than those where the surface was more solid. He says he had observed this at Naples. He accordingly tells us that there is a remedy for earthquakes, in the making of deep excavations and holes in many parts of cities. Pliny also relates that the ancients, observing the abhorrence with which the earth regards great structures or encumbrances, built the great temple of Diana at Ephesus on marshy ground, as being less liable to be thrown down by an earthquake. This immunity appears to be in consequence of the great solubility of the explosive vapours, which are rapidly absorbed by the moisture of such situations.