網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

a dismal and putrid lake was seen where it stood. We looked about to find some one who could tell us of its sad catastrophe; but we could see no person. All was become a melancholy solitude; a scene of hideous desolation. Thus proceeding pensively along, in quest of some human being who could give us a little information, we at length saw a boy sitting by the shore, and appearing stupified with terror. Of him, therefore, we inquired concerning the fate of the city; but he could not be prevailed on to give us an answer. We entreated him, with every expression of tenderness and pity, to tell us; but his senses were quite wrapped up in the contemplation of the danger he had escaped. We offered him some victuals, but he seemed to loathe the sight. We still persisted in our offices of kindness: but he only pointed to the place of the city, like one out of his senses; and then running up into the woods, was never heard of after. Such was the fate of the city of Euphemia. As we continued our melancholy course along the shore, the whole coast, for the space of two hundred miles, presented nothing but the remains of cities; and men scattered without a habitation, over the fields. Proceeding thus along, we at length ended our distressful voyage, by arriving at Naples, after having escaped a thousand dangers both at sea and land.” Goldsmith.

THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY.

ON the north-west of the county of Antrim, opening into the Atlantic, is a great natural curiosity: it consists of a vast collection of basaltic pillars, extending several miles along the coast, and divided into fragments, or parts of

causeways.

The chief causeway consists of a regular arrangement of millions of pentagonal and hexagonal columns of basaltes, a deep grayish blue-coloured stone, harder than marble: the pillars are chiefly in the form of a pentagon, so closely situated on their sides, though perfectly distinct from top to bottom, that scarcely anything can be introduced between them. The columns are of an unequal height and breadth; some of the highest visible above the surface of the strand, and

at the foot of the precipice, are about twenty feet; none of the principal arrangement exceeds this height; how deep they are under the surface has not yet been ascertained.

This causeway extends nearly two hundred yards; visible at low water; how far beyond is uncertain; from its declining appearance, however, towards the sea, it is probable it does not extend under water to a distance anything equal to what is seen above. The breadth of the causeway, which runs out into one continued range of columns, is, in general, from twenty to thirty feet; at one place or two, it may be nearly forty feet for a few yards. The highest part of this causeway is the narrowest, at the foot of the impending cliff, whence the whole projects, where, for four or five yards, it is from ten to fifteen feet.

The columns of this narrow part incline from a perpendicular a little to the westward, and form a slope on their tops, by the very unequal height of the columns on the two sides, by which an ascent is made at the foot of the cliff from the head of one column to the next above, to the top of the causeway, which, at the distance of half a dozen yards from this, assumes a perpendicular position, and lowering in its general height, widens to from twenty to thirty feet, and for one hundred yards nearly, is always above water. The tops of the columns for this length being nearly of an equal height, form a grand and singular parade, that may be easily walked on, rather inclining to the water's edge But from high water-mark, by the continued surges on every return of the tide, the platform lowers considerably, and becomes more and more uneven, so as not to be walked on but with the greatest care. At the distance of a hundred and fifty yards from the cliff, it turns a little to the east for twenty or thirty yards, and then sinks into the sea.

The form of these columns is mostly pentagonal; some few are of three, four, and six sides: what is very extraordinary, and particularly curious, is, that there are not two columns among ten thousand to be found, that either have their sides equal amongst themselves, or whose figures are alike. Nor is the composition of these columns or pillars less deserving the attention of the curious spectator. They are not of one solid stone in an

upright position, but composed of several short lengths, curiously joined, not with flat surfaces, but articulated into each other like a ball and socket, the one end at the joint having a cavity, into which the convex end of the opposite is exactly fitted. The depth of the concavity is generally about three or four inches. What is still further remarkable of the joint, the convexity and corresponding concavity are not conformed to the external angular figure of the column, but exactly round, and as large as the diameter of the column will admit, and consequently, as the angles of these columns are in general extremely unequal, the circular edges of the joint seldom coincide with more than two or three sides of the pentagonal, and from the edge of the circular part of the joint to the exterior sides and angles, they are quite plain.

It is likewise very remarkable, that the articulations of these joints are frequently inverted; in some the concavity is upwards, in others the reverse. The length, also, of these particular stones, from joint to joint, is various; in general they are from eighteen to twenty-four inches long, and for the most part longer towards the bottom of the column than nearer the top, and the articulation of the joints something deeper. The size of the columns is as different as their length and form; in general they are from fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. There is no trace of uniformity of design throughout the whole combination, except in the form of the joint and the general pentagonal shape. What is extraordinary and curious is, that notwithstanding the universal dissimilitude of the columns, both as to their figure and diameter, and though perfectly distinct from top to bottom, yet is the whole so closely joined at all points, that there is scarcely room to introduce a knife between them, either on the sides or angles.

The whole exhibition of this great plan of nature, so far superior to the little things done by man, is a confused regularity and disuniformity, displaying too much diversity of plan to be all seen or comprehended at once. A considerable way along the coast, the cliffs, rising in some parts from two to three hundred fathoms above the level of the sea, present similar appearances. At the point which bounds the bay on the east, and just above the arrowest part of the greatest causeway, a long collection

of pillars, called the needles, are seen, the tops of which, just appearing out of the sloping bank, plainly show them to be in an oblique position, and about half way between the perpendicular and horizontal. These seem to have been removed from a perpendicular to their present oblique position, by the sinking or falling of the cliff.-Clarke.

ICE-ISLANDS AND ICEBERGS OF SPITZBERGEN.

THE name of ice-islands is given by sailors to a great quantity of ice collected into one huge mass, and floating upon the seas near or within the polar circles. Many of these are to be met with on the coast of Spitzbergen, to the great danger of the shipping employed in the Greenland fishery. In the midst of these tremendous masses, navigators have been arrested in their career, and frozen to death. The forms assumed by the ice in this chilling climate are pleasing to the most incurious eye.

The surface of that which is congealed from the seawater, is flat, even, hard, and opaque, resembling white sugar, and incapable of being slidden on. The greater

pieces, or fields, are many leagues in length; the lesser are the meadows of the seals, on which, at times, those animals frolic by hundreds. The approximation of two great fields produces a most singular phenomenon: they force smaller pieces out of the water, and add them to their own surface, till at length, the whole forms an aggregate of tremendous height. They float in the sea like so many rugged mountains, and are sometimes five or six hundred yards thick, the far greater part of which is concealed beneath the water. Those which remain in this frozen climate receive continual growth; others are by degrees wafted into southern latitudes, and melt gradually by the heat of the sun, till they waste away, and disappear in the boundless element. The collision of the great fields of ice in high latitudes is often attended with a noise that, for a time, takes away the sense of hearing anything else; and that of the smaller, with a grinding of unspeakable horror. The water which dashes against the mountainous ice, freezes into an infinite

variety of forms, and gives the voyager ideal towns, streets, churches, steeples, and every shape which imagination can frame.

Besides the fields of ice in high latitudes, there are icebergs, as they are called, or large bodies of ice, that fill the valleys between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Among the most remarkable are those of the east coast of Spitzbergen. They are seven in number, at considerable distances from each other; each fills the valleys for tracts unknown, in a region totally inaccessible in the interior parts. The first exhibits a front three hundred feet high, emulating the emerald in its green colour: cataracts of melted snow precipitate down various parts, and blocked spiry mountains, streaked with white, bound the sides, and rise, crag above crag, as far as the eye can reach in the back-ground. -Goldsmith.

POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM.

WHEN it was first proposed that we should winter in Italy, instead of pursuing our original plan of returning home from Geneva, I remember my exclamation was, “Then we shall see Pompeii !”—and now it is with a joy which as yet seems too undefined to be real, that I feel we have indeed visited this city of past ages, have penetrated into its houses, wandered amidst its deserted streets-that we have stood in its forum, and gazed on its ruined temples. Do you wonder that I feel as if awaking from a dream? Pompeii possesses an interest which even the most magnificent cities of the Roman empire must fail to excite; in them we may see finer ruins, monuments of the power and splendour of the ancients; but here, and here only, we can contemplate man as he existed in former times; here we are admitted into the retreats of private and domestic life, and can learn from observation that man is in all ages the same; we follow him from his own house to the theatres, the baths, the forum, and the temples; we trace the same actuating motives, the same love of splendour, of amusement, the same eager pursuit of business, the same impulses to soar from earth to the invisible and eternal world beyond. It is this which excites the

« 上一頁繼續 »