“Sterilisque diu palus, aptaque remis,
               Vicinas urbes alit, et grave sentit aratrum.”

["That which was once a sterile marsh, and bore vessels on its
bosom, now feeds neighbouring cities, and admits the plough.” 
—­Horace, De Arte Poetica, v. 65.]

But there is no great appearance that this isle was this New World so lately discovered:  for that almost touched upon Spain, and it were an incredible effect of an inundation, to have tumbled back so prodigious a mass, above twelve hundred leagues:  besides that our modern navigators have already almost discovered it to be no island, but terra firma, and continent with the East Indies on the one side, and with the lands under the two poles on the other side; or, if it be separate from them, it is by so narrow a strait and channel, that it none the more deserves the name of an island for that.

It should seem, that in this great body, there are two sorts of motions, the one natural and the other febrific, as there are in ours.  When I consider the impression that our river of Dordogne has made in my time on the right bank of its descent, and that in twenty years it has gained so much, and undermined the foundations of so many houses, I perceive it to be an extraordinary agitation:  for had it always followed this course, or were hereafter to do it, the aspect of the world would be totally changed.  But rivers alter their course, sometimes beating against the one side, and sometimes the other, and some times quietly keeping the channel.  I do not speak of sudden inundations, the causes of which everybody understands.  In Medoc, by the seashore, the Sieur d’Arsac, my brother, sees an estate he had there, buried under the sands which the sea vomits before it:  where the tops of some houses are yet to be seen, and where his rents and domains are converted into pitiful barren pasturage.  The inhabitants of this place affirm, that of late years the sea has driven so vehemently upon them, that they have lost above four leagues of land.  These sands are her harbingers:  and we now see great heaps of moving sand, that march half a league before her, and occupy the land.

The other testimony from antiquity, to which some would apply this discovery of the New World, is in Aristotle; at least, if that little book of Unheard of Miracles be his—­[one of the spurious publications brought out under his name—­D.W.].  He there tells us, that certain Carthaginians, having crossed the Atlantic Sea without the Straits of Gibraltar, and sailed a very long time, discovered at last a great and fruitful island, all covered over with wood, and watered with several broad and deep rivers, far remote from all terra firma; and that they, and others after them, allured by the goodness and fertility of the soil, went thither with their wives and children, and began to plant a colony.  But the senate of Carthage perceiving their people by little and little to diminish, issued out an express prohibition, that none, upon pain of death, should transport themselves thither; and also drove out these new inhabitants; fearing, ‘tis said, lest’ in process of time they should so multiply as to supplant themselves and ruin their state.  But this relation of Aristotle no more agrees with our new-found lands than the other.