the navigation of early ages, and it is but rational to believe, that it was as early inhabited, as the other three parts of the world. Very early, no doubt, it was; but how early, no mortal in any part of the world can so much as guess. A great number of very learned writers have furnished us with, I believe, fifty or sixty opinions, not touching the time, but the mode, of peopling America, all laying it down as a maxim, that Noah was the ancestor of the native Americans. I shall not give myself the trouble of canvassing these opinions, whereof I think there is but one which merits notice. It was certainly a matter, within the bounds of possibility, for either the north-western inhabitants of Europe, or the north-eastern of Asia, to have passed into the north of America, at any time when they found themselves uncomfortably situated in their old place of abode. If the cold in so high a latitude seems to forbid the migration, it may as well be thought to facilitate it by furnishing a bridge of ice and frozen snow to pass on. Traverses not immensely easier, nor less bold, are by the help of rein-deer, still made in Lapland and Samoedia, on parts of the gulf of Finland, and the White sea, as well as over extensive tracts of land, deeply covered with snow. It is hard to say how early the Norwegian Laplanders, Islanders, and Greenlanders, living wholly on fish, might, in quest of this necessary article, have passed, or by the winds been forced to pass, from one of these countries to the other. Who can tell however, whether the passage from Kamskatka to California might not have encouraged an Asiatic migration in a better manner? as islands in the ocean are every age rising, or falling, who can say, there were none of old, now sunk, which might have lain in the course of such migration, and served as step-stones to an imperfect navigation? But here having mentioned, not begged, the supposition of several small islands, swallowed by the sea, I must not forget the proof which may be given, and ought to be insisted on, of one great island, or part, if we will, of a continent, which might have carried the posterity of Noah to America with safety and convenience, as speedily as they could think of making the journey. In the Timæus of Plato, Solon is said to have heard from an Egyptian priest, that there was in the old archives of his country mention made of an island, as large as Asia and Europe, called Atlantis, lying so near to the westward of the latter, that its inhabitants, invading this part of the world, had carried all before them, till they came to Greece, when news was Or brought them that their whole island was sunk in the sea by an earthquake. Although this account is a little too extraordinary to be merely matter of invention, and although the sea wherein this very extensive track of land was said, somehow or other, to have been swallowed up, hath time out of mind been called the Atlantic ocean; yet, I confess, it had in my mind the air of a fable, and the rather, as it originated from an Egyptian record, until the time of that earthquake which destroyed Lisbon; which shook all the English colonies in North America, as far westward as the Apalachian mountains, the whole Atlantic, and all Europe. This proves to demonstration, that a cavern there still is under all the aforesaid sea and lands, which gave room for the rarified air and water to produce this enormous phenomenon. Over this the Atlantic lands might have stood as a roof, which thrown down by an earthquake, were covered by the sea, but supported by mountains, standing here and there on the floor of the cavern, and some higher than the rest, directly under the British and other Atlantic islands, yet extant, leaves still underneath a vacuity, sufficient for the play of those vapours, which, in our time, have acted with a force so powerful and extensive. It was perhaps not improbable, that the retreat of the sea, on all the shores of the world was chiefly owing to the possession, taken by the waters, of the space formerly occupied by the Atlantic. The cavern underneath, though still of vast depth, hath probably lost as much of its vacuity, as the waters of the ocean have since taken possession of over its roof, so as nearly to equal the spaces lost below and gained above. The soundings, which, it is said are found, all along, from the west of Ireland to the banks southward of Newfoundland, do still farther encourage the notion of land, sunk, in that track, under the sea, and nevertheless somehow supported there, to a height, not often found in such extensive parts of the ocean. This idea, built a great deal more on fact than theory, may help to realize the Egyptian record, and account for the peopling of America, whereof the Atlantis might have made a part, or at least have lain as contiguous to it on that side, as it did on this to Europe. Be this as it will, the moose-deer, the fossil bones of elephants, and many other things, found both in Europe and America, enforce a probability, that a passage once lay open for other creatures, as well as for men, to form a communication between these two parts of the world. Nay it is averred, that some conformity, hath been found, even in particu lar words, between the language of the old Irish, and those of the inhabitants about Hudson's bay, Terra-Labradore, and NovaScotia. It were to be wished, that the Swedes, Danes, Irish and English, would look a little farther into this matter, than they have yet done. There are customs, too remote from nature, and too extraordinary, for whole nations, that never had any communication with one another, to have gone into, for instance, circumcision in parts of Great Tartary, where the coldness of the climate did not prescribe the practice. One, still farther from the common road of invention, is a custom, that hath obtained, from time immemorial, among the Laplanders, and among the native Irish, who in some places still practise it, which is this; in some disorders, and to make themselves hardy, they build a sort of oven (some of them I have been shewn) wherein they set a large stone, almost red hot, beside this stone the patient sits down stark naked, and shutting the enclosure, so as to let in but little air, continues there until he is half liquified into sweat, and then rushing out, rolls himself in snow, or in cold water, always close by his oven. As this is the method of hardening iron, I do not recommend it to any but iron men. However, the same method of cure is universally practised by all the northern Americans, who can as easily and exactly tell you when and where Æneas's nurse was buried, as when this custom first obtained among them. It is however a clear point with me, that they must have brought it with them from the east. Would, I could say, when, and prove it so as that an infidel must be forced to believe it, I say, forced, because nothing less would do with him. The American men appearing without beards hath been a sufficient hint with infidels to prove them to be of a different species from the Noachida, and will as justly prove us to be so when shaved, for the Americans pluck out the hairs of their beards with little instruments, similar to our tweezers. This however may file with their other arguments for the same purpose. 18. Having in the former paragraph intimated, that the sea hath observably retired from the land, all round the world, excepting, I mean, between or near the tropics, lest I should seem to have half begged a point, relative to the argument I was then handling, I think it proper to be somewhat more particular on that surprising subject. The reports made by travellers, of any observation, which I have either heard or read, uniformly vouch for this retreat of the sea. These were, by no means, necessary to convince me of the fact, who have passed but a small portion of my time out of Ireland, as farther I need not have gone for a full proof on this behalf. An island, situated as this is, in the ocean, affords all the data required for the purpose. The surface of the sea, excepting as above excepted, must, in a calm, be every where equally distant from the centre of the globe. If, therefore, the sea hath every where round Ireland abated, it must have abated every where round the world. Now, this abatement must have been owing to one or other of these two things; either the waters must have subsided, or the land must have been elevated. The land might have been elevated in some places, but not in many, not by any means in all. It is ridiculous to suppose, that subterraneous fires have pushed up, and that so equally, the whole habitable part of the globe. If, therefore, the ocean hath retired from the shores, as above asserted and presently to be proved, either great parts of the waters have been annihilated, or have broken in upon some part of the land, equivalent to its abatement on the lands elsewhere. But the annihilation of so much water, or of even any particle of matter, in the world, is too much surely for infidelity to believe. It follows then, that if the sea hath made so general a retreat, it must have made some particular and proportionable encroachment on the land. That it hath made the retreat mentioned, is evident to the most cursory observer, who sees on both the eastern and western coasts of Ireland huge hills of seasand thrown up, and some of them to more than a hundred perpendicular feet above the highest spring tides at present; who sees, that several of these hills now stand a mile or two within land; and who sees, that the sea now never rises nearly on a level with, nor approaches, the bases of those hills, within a mile or two, and not even in the most violent in-blowing storms. That those hills were raised by such storms, some thousands of centu ries ago, and at once somewhat higher than the then level of the sea, I grant; but they neither could be then, nor can the like hills now, be raised to so great a height above that level, above which the recent hills of sea-sand do never rise more than thirty or forty feet, and being exposed to the immediate action of the sea, are frequently washed away to the lowest grain, and thrown up in other places, while the more inland downs stand untouched, and as immoveable, as the Alps themselves. These ocular data considered, we cannot suppose, that the sea rose in ancient times less than thirty or forty perpendicular feet higher than it does at present. To account for this by the comparatively minute encroachment of the sea here and there upon the land, is saying nothing which observation can vouch for; besides, in this case, I shall have a right to insist on the gradual encroachments of the land on the sea, as in Egypt, to a far greater extent, which must have proportionably raised the waters of the sea, supposing the abatement of the waters not to have been the principal cause of that encroachment. If by the loss of Atlantis, and by the wash of soil from the mountains, generally too steep to have been arable, the animal world hath literally lost ground, the retreat of the sea from the land, by laying bare the most fertile land, now possessed and cultivated, hath perhaps made an equivalent amends. A man is naturally led to this acknowledgment of providential goodness by standing on one of our highest sand hills, and from thence taking a view of thirty or forty miles square, which in many places he may do, of the finest countries now enjoyed by mankind, but proved by his elevated situation to have been once the resort of cod, turbot, &c. The whole Delta or Lower Egypt was gained in this manner; and by far the greater part of the lands in North America, occupied by the English, were probably added to the habitable part of the world by the same recess of the sea. At the shores they rise but a few feet above the sea, and continue low and flat to a great extent westward. Almost every where they are covered with a pretty deep bed of sand; and sea shells, in large parcels, are found some hundreds of miles from the sea, mouldering on or near the surface of the ground. How much more of the like character may be observed in other parts of the world, I know not, nor would it be necessary to support the point I have been speaking to. Although the rotation of the earth round its axis raises and keeps the ocean seventeen miles higher between the tropics, at least under the equator, than it is near the poles; it cannot be supposed, that this elevation hath been always increasing, so as to lay bare the lands I have been alluding to in higher latitudes. Were this the case, mount Atlas must have been under water long since, though the ancient fabulists thanked it for not suffering the skies to fall on their heads. But I have reason to think, that, in fact, the recess of the sea from the land, between the tropics, and near them, is as observable as about Ireland. So flat is the country about the river Gambia, that the tide flows there into the land some hundreds of miles, though they rise in the ocean but about five feet. And the country, on each hand, to a great distance, is very near as |