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272 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
mense inundation made strange changes in the inhabited places of the earth, as it is thought that the sea cut off Sicily from Italy, —
(6) Heec loca, vi quondam et vasta convulsa ruina, Dissiluisse ferunt, cum protinus utraque tellus Una foret,? —
(a) Cyprus from Syria, and the island of Negropont from the mainland of Boeotia; and elsewhere joined lands that were formerly separate, filling with mud and sand the chan- nels between them, — sterilisque diu palus aptaque remis Vicinas urbes alit, et grave sentit aratrum.?
But there is no great likelihood that this new world that we have just discovered is that island; for it almost touched Spain, and it would be an incredible effect of the inundation to have moved it away, as it is, more than twelve hundred leagues; besides which, the explorations of modern naviga- tors have almost made sure that this is not an island, but - mainland, connected with the East Indies on one side, and elsewhere with the countries that lie under the two poles; or, if divided from them, it is by so narrow a passage that it is not thereby entitled to be called an island. (4) It seems as if there may be motions in those great bodies as in our own, (c) some natural, others irregular. (4) When I see the en- croachment that my river Dordogne is making on its right bank, in my own day, and how much it has gained in twenty years, and has undermined the foundations of several build- ings, I see clearly that it is an unusual disturbance; for if the river had always so done, or if it were always so to do, the face of the world would be subverted. But they * are subject to changes: sometimes they overflow on one side, sometimes on the other; sometimes they keep within their banks. I am not speaking of sudden inundations, of which
1 They say that these lands were once torn violently asunder in a great convulsion; till then the two lands had been but one. — Virgil, 4ineid, Il, 414.
? Long a sterile fen, fit for the oar, it now feeds the neighbouring towns and feels the weight of the plough. — Horace, Ars Poetica, 65.
3 That is, rivers.