LETTER II.

Richmond, September 7.

ALMOST every day, my dear S.

..... ·9 some

new evidence presents itself in support of the Abbe Raynal's opinion, that this continent was once covered by the ocean, from which it has gradually emerged. But that this emersion is, even comparatively speaking, of recent date, cannot be admitted; unless the comparison be made with the creation of the earth; and even then, in order to justify the remark, the era of the creation must, I fear, be fixed much farther back than the period which has been inferred from the Mosaic account.*

* Some errour has certainly happened in computing the era of the earth's creation from the five books of Moses.

The following facts are authenticated beyond any kind of doubt. During the last spring, a gentleman in the neighbourhood of Williamsburg, about sixty miles below this place, in

Voltaire informs us, that certain French Philosophers, who visited China inspected the official register or history of the eclipses of the sun and moon, which, it seems, has been continually kept in that country; that on calculating them back, they were all found correct, and conducted those philosophers to a period (I will not undertake to speak with certainty of the time, but I think) twenty-three centuries before the Mosaic era. It is notorious, however, that the Chinese plume themselves on the antiquity of their country; and in order to prop this, it would have been just as easy for the Chinese astronomers to have fabricated and dressed up the register in question, by posterior calculations, as for the French astronomers to have made their retrospective examination of the accuracy of those eclipses. The same science precisely was requisite for both purposes; and although the improvement of the arts and scienses in China, was found, by the first Europeans who went amongst them, to bear no proportion to the antiquity of the country, yet there is no reason to doubt that the Chi

digging a ditch on his farm, discovered about four or five feet below the surface of the earth, a considerable portion of the skeleton of a whale. Several fragments of the ribs and

nese mandarins were at least as competent to the calculation of an eclipse as the shepherds of Egypt. Indeed we are, 1 believe, expressly told, that the Chinese, long before they were visited by the people of Europe, had been in the habit of using a species of astronomical apparatus; and of stamping almanacs from plates or blocks, many hundred years, even before printing was discovered in Europe. I see no great reason, therefore, to rely with very implicit confidence on the register of China. Indeed I am very little disposed to build my faith, as to any historical fact, on evidence perfectly within the reach of human art and imposture; comprehending all writings, inscriptions, literary or hieroglyphic, medals, &c. which tend, either to flatter our passion for the marvellous or aggrandize the particu lar nation in whose bosom they are found. And, therefore, together with the Chinese register, I throw out of the consideration of this question another record, which goes to the same purpose: I mean the Chaldaic manuscript found by Alexander in the city of Babylon,

other parts of the system were found; and all the vertebræ regularly arranged and very little impaired as to their figure. The spot, on which this skeleton was found, lies about

The inferences reported by Mr. Brydone, as having been drawn, by Recupero, from the lavas of mount Etna (those stupendous records which no human art or imposture could possibly have fabricated) deserve, I think, much more se rious attention. They are subject, indeed, to one of the preceding objections: to wit, that the data, from which all the subsequent calculations are drawn, are inscriptions: appealing not only to our passion for the marvellous, but flattering the vanity of the Sicilians, by establishing the great age of their mountain, at once their curse and their blessing. These inscriptions, however, do not rest merely on their own authority: they allege a fact which is very strongly countenanced by recent and unerring observation. As Brydone may not be in the hands of every person who may chance to possess and read this bagatelle, and as this subject is really curious and interesting, I beg leave to subjoin those parts of that traveller's highly entertaining let ters, which relate to it.

two miles from the nearest shore of James river, and fifty or sixty from the Atlantick ocean. The whole phenomenon bore the clearest evidence that the animal had pe

"The last lava we crossed, before our arrival there [Jaci Reale] is of vast extent. I thought we never should have had done with it: it certainly is not less than six or seven miles broad, and appears in many places to be of an enormous depth.

"When we came near the sea, I was desirous to see what form it had assumed in meeting with the water. I went to examine it, and found it had driven back the waves for up. wards of a mile, and had formed a large, black, high promontory, where, before, it was deep water. This lava, I imagined, from its barrenness, for it is, as yet, covered with a very scanty soil, had run from the mountain only a few ages ago; but was surprised to be informed by Signior Recupero, the historiographer of Etna, that this very lava is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus to have burst from Etna, in the time of the second Punic war, when Syracuse was besieged by the Romans. A detachment was sent from Taurominum to the relief of the besieged. They were stopped on their march by this stream of lava which ha