caufes he is the author of were at hand, and with them he could do the work. The fun evaporated; the winds dried; and the waters no longer forced upwards from the abyfs, fubfided into the many Swallows or fwallow-boles, that are ftill to be feen in many places, on mountains and in vallies; thofe on the mountains being neceffary to abforb that vaft column of waters which rofe 15 cubits above the highest hills.

A fwallow is fuch another opening in the ground as Eldine Hole in Derbyshire (16), and in travelling from the Peak to the northern extremity of Northumberland, I

(16) Eidine Hole in Derbyshire is a mile fouth of Mamtor, and 4 miles caft of Buxton. It is a perpendicular gulph or chafm, which I tried to fathom more than once, and found it by my line, and by the meafure of found (at the rate of 16 feet one twelfth in one fecond, the measure Dr. Halley allows near the earth for the defcent of heavy bodies) to be 1266 feet, or 422 yards down to the water; but how deep the wa ter is, cannot be known. I fuppofe it reaches to theabyfs. This chafm is forty yards long above ground, and ten over at its broadeft part: but from the day there is a floping defcent of forty yards to the mouth of the horrible pit, and this is only four yards long and one and a half broad, Two villains who were. executed at Derby not long ago, confeffed at the gallows, that they threw a poor traveller into this dreadful gulph, after they had robbed him.`

have feen many fuch holes in the earth, both on the hills and in the vales. I have likewife met with them in other countries. By these fwallows, a vast quantity of the waters, to be fure, went down to the great receptacle; all that was not exhaled, or licked up by the winds; or, except what might be left to increase the former feas of the antediluvian world into those vaft oceans which now encompass the globe, and partly to form those vast lakes that are in feveral parts of the world. These things easily account for the removal of that vaft mafs of waters which covered the earth, and was in a mighty column above the highest hills. Every difficulty disappears before evaporation, the drying winds, the fwallows, and, perhaps, the turning feas into oceans: but the three first things now named were fufficient, and the gentlemen who have reasoned fo ingenioufly against one another about the removal of the waters, might have faved themselves a deal of trouble, if they had reduced the operation to three fimple things, under the direction of the First Caufe. The fwallows efpecially muft do great work in the cafe, if we take into their number not only very many open gulphs or chafms, the depth of which no line or found can reach; but likewife the communication

munication of very many parts of the fea, and of many great unfathomable locks, with the abyss. Thefe abforbers could easily receive what had before come out of them. The fun by evaporation, with the wind, might take away what was raised. There is nothing hard then in conceiving how the waters of the deluge were brought

away.

But as to the lake I have mentioned, into which a rapid flood poured from the bowels of the mountain, what became of this water, the reader may enquire? To be fure, as it did not run off in any ftreams, nor make the lake rife in the leaft degree, there must have been a communication in fome parts of its bottom, between the water of it and the abyss. As the loch. on the top of the mountain I have defcribed had no feeders, yet emitted streams, and therefore must be fupported by the abyfs; fo this lake, with fo powerful a feeder, not running over, or emitting water any way, muft discharge itself in the abyss below. The cafe of it must be the fame as that of the Cafpian fea. Into this fea many rivers pour, and one in particular, the Volga I mean, that is more than fufficient, in the quantity of water it turns out in a year, to drown the whole world.

Yet

Yet the Cafpian remains in one state, and does not overflow its banks, excepting, as before obferved, fometimes, in the space of 16 years. It must by paffages communicate with the great deep. It refunds the rivers into the great abyfs. The cafe of the Mediterranean fea is the fame; for, though a strong current from the Atlantic continually fits through the Straits of Gibraltar, yet these waters do not make it overflow the country round it, and, of confequence, they must be carried off by a fubterranean paffage, or paffages, to the abyfs.

in Stanemore

continued.

37. From the lake I proThe journeyceeded the next morning, June 14, 1725, toward the northeaft end of Westmoreland, having paffed the night in a found fleep, under the trees by the water fide, but was forced by the precipices to fhape my courfe from four in the morning till eight, to the northweft, and then the road turned caft-northeast, till I came to a great glin, where a river made a rumbling noise over rocks and inequali ties of many kinds, and formed a very wild wonderful scene. The river was broad and deep, and on an eafy descent to it was an affemblage

An account of an affemblage of black columnar marble.

femblage of ftones, that ran in length about 100 feet, in breadth 30 feet, and somewhat resembling the giant's caufeway, in the county of Antrim, and province of Ulfter in Ireland; nine miles northeast from the pretty town of Colerain. The giant's caufeway, reader, is a prodigious pile of rocks, 80 feet broad, 20 feet above the reft of the ftrand, and that run from the bottom of a high hill above 200 yards into the ocean.

The affemblage of ftones I am speaking of are columns with feveral corners, that rife three yards above the ground, and are joined as if done by art; the points being convex and concave, and thereby lying one in another. These co lumns have five and fix fides, a few of them seven; and a number of them nicely and exactly placed together make one large pillar from one foot to two in diameter. They are fo nicely joined, that altho' they have five and fix fides, as I before faid, yet their contexture is fo adapted, as to leaver no vacuity between them; the prominent angles of one pillar fitting, and falling exactly into the hollows left them between two others, and the plain fides exactly answer to one another; fo that thofe hexagons and pentagons of columnar marble appear as