rished in its native element; and as the ocean is the nearest resort of the whale, it follows that the ocean must once have covered the country, at least as high up as Williamsburg.

ving reached the sea before their arrival at the foot of the mountain, had cut off their passage, and obliged them to return by the back of Etna, upwards of a hundred miles about. His authority for this, he tells me, was taken from inscriptions on Roman monuments found on this lava, and that it was likewise well ascertained by many of the old Sicilian authors. Now as this is about two thousand years ago, one would imagine, if lavas have a regular progress in becoming fertile fields, that this must long ago have become at least arable; this, however, is not the case; and it is, as yet, only covered with a very scanty vegetation and incapable of producing either corn or vines. There are indeed pretty large trees growing in the crevices which are full of a rich earth; but in all probability, it will be some hundred years yet, before there is enough of it to render this land of any use to the proprietors.

Again, in digging several wells lately in this town, the teeth of sharks were found from sixty to ninety or a hundred feet below the surface of the earth. The probability is that these teeth were deposited by the shark itself; and as this fish is never known to in

"It is curious to consider, that the surface of this black and barren matter, in process of time, becomes one of the most fertile soils upon earth: But what must be the time to bring it to its utmost perfection, when after two thousand years, it is still, in most places, but a barren rock?" Vol. I. Letter 6.

Signior Recupero, who obligingly engages to be our cicerone, has shown us some curious remains of antiquity; but they have been all so shaken and shattered by the mountain, that hardly any thing is to be found intire.

"Near to a vault, which is now thirty feet below ground and has, probably, been a burial place, there is a drawwell, where there are several strata of lavas, with earth to a considerable thickness over the surface of each stra tum. Recupero has made use of this as an argument to prove the great antiquity of the mountain. For if it require two thousand years or upwards, to form but a

vest very shallow streams, the conclusion is clear that this whole country has once been buried under several fathoms of water. At all events, these teeth must be considered as ascertaining what was once the surface of the earth here; which surface is very little higher than that of James river. Now if it be considered that there has been no perceptiscanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must have been more than that space of time betwixt each of the But what eruptions which have formed these strata. shall we say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci of a great depth. They pierced through seven distinct lavas, one under the other, the surfaces of which were parallel, and most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth. Now, says he, the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least fourteen thousand years ago." Vol. I. Letter 7. Whereas the computation inferred, but without doubt inaccurately, from the Pentateuch, makes the earth itself only between five and six thousand years old,

ble difference wrought in the figure or elevation of the coast, nor, consequently, in the precipitation of the interiour streams since the earliest recorded discovery of Virginia, which was two hundred years ago, it will follow, that James river must, for many hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, have been running, at least here, with a very rapid, headlong current; the friction whereof must certainly have rendered the channel much deeper than it was at the time of the deposition of these teeth. The result is clear, that the surface of the stream, which even now, after all this friction and consequent depression, is so nearly on a level with the site of the shark's teeth, must, originally, have been much higher. I take this to be an irrefragable proof, that the land here was then inundated; and as there is no ground between this and the Atlantick, higher than that on which Richmond is built, it seems to me

indisputably certain, that the whole of this beautiful country was once covered with a dreary waste of water.*

To what curious and interesting reflections does this subject lead us? Over this hill on which I am now sitting and writing at my ease, and from which I look with delight on the landscape that smiles around me-over this

* An elegant and well informed writer on the theory of the earth, under the signature of "An inquirer," whose remarks were suggested by the perusal of this letter of the British Spy, observes that sea shells and other marine substances are found in every explored part of the world," on the loftiest mountains of Europe and the still loftier Andes of South America." As the British Spy was not writing a regular and elaborate treatise on the origin of the earth, he did not deem it material to congregate all the facts which have been seen, and supposed, in relation to this subject.

Whether the British Spy is to be considered as an Englishman of rank on a tour through America, and writing the above letter in Richmond to his friend in London; or