in travelling from the Peak to the northern extremity of Northumberland, I 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 swallows, a vast quantity of the waters, to be sure, 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 vaft lakes that are in feveral parts of the world. These things eafily 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 difappears before evaporation, the drying winds, the fwallows, and, perhaps, the turning feas into oceans: but the three first things now named pendicular gulph or chafm, which I tried to fathom. more than once, and found it by my line, and by the measure of found (at the rate of 16 feet one twelfth in one fecond, the measure Dr. Halley allows near the earth for the descent of heavy bodies), to be 1266 feet, or 422 yards down to the water; but how deep the water is, cannot be known. I fuppofe it reaches to the abyfs. 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, confefled at the gallows, that they threw a poor traveller into this dreadful gulph, after they had robbed him. 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 must do great work in the cafe, if we take into their number not only very many open gulphs or chasms, the depth of which no line or found can reach ; but likewife the communications of very many parts of the fea, and of many great unfathomable lochs, with the abys. Thefe abforbers could eafily 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 inquire? To be sure, 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 abyfs. As the loch on the top of the mountain I have defcribed had no feeders, yet emitted ftreams, and therefore must be fupported by the abyss; fo this lake, with fo powerful a feeder, not running over, or 03 emit The journey in Stane tinued. emitting water any way, muft discharge it felf in the abyfs below. The cafe of it muft 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 the Cafpian remains in one state, and does not overflow its banks, excepting, as before obferved, fometimes, in the space of 16 years. It muft by paffages communicate with the great deep. It refunds the rivers. into the great abyss. The cafe of the Mediterranean fea is the fame; for, tho' a strong current from the Atlantic continually fits through the Strait of Gibraltar, yet thefe 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 abyss. 37. From the lake I proceeded the next morning, June 14, 1725, toward the northmore con- east end of Westmoreland, having paffed the night in a found ileep under the trees by the water fide, but was forced by the precipices to an affem- fhape my courfe from four in the morning till blage of eight, to the north-weft, and then the road black co- turned eaft-north-eaft, till I came to a great An ac count of lumnar marble. glin, where a river made a rumbling noise over recks and inequalities of many kinds, and formed a very wild wonderful feene. The river was broad and deep, and on an easy descent to it was an affemblage of stones, that ran in length about Ico feet, in breadth 30 feet, and fomewhat refembling the giant's causeway, in the county of Antrim, and province of Ulfter in Ireland; nine miles north-east from the pretty town of Colerain. The giants 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. Thefe columns have five and fix fides, a few of them feven; 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 leave no vacuity between them; the promi nent 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 if finished by the hands of the moft mafterly 04 work workmen. All the pillars ftood exactly perpendicular to the plane of the horizon. Doctor Foley, in the Philofophical Tranfactions, No. 212, fpeaking of the giants causeway, seems to think these wonderful pillars are compofed of the common fort of craggy rock by the fea fide; and the authors of the Complete System of Geography are of opinion, they refemble the lapis Bafaltes; but fome think they are a fort of marble. Now the truth is, the Bafaltes of the antients is a very elegant and beautiful marble of a fine deep gloffy black, like high polished fteel, and is always found erect in the form of regular angular columns, composed of a number of joints, fitted together, and making pillars: fo that where fuch pillars are seen, they are undoubtedly the columnar marble or touchstone of the antients. Dr. Hill, in his history of foffils, gives a good account of the nature of this body, and mentions feveral places it is to be found in; but seems not to have heard there was any of it among the northern mountains of our country. This marble is one of the nobleft productions of nature, and of all the foffil kingdom the most astonishing body. If art is requifite for the formation of many things we fee daily done with elegance and beauty, then certainly, mind itself, even the fupreme mind, muft have caused fuch |