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Show 448 DEFICIENCY OF HISTORICAL RECORDS. of Balbeck alone twenty thousand men are said to have been victims to the convulsion. It would be as irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into a detailed account of such calamities, as to follow the track of an invading army, to enumerate the cities burnt or rased to the ground, and reckon the number of individuals who perished by famine or the sword. If such then be the amount of ascertained changes in the last one hundred and forty years, notwithstanding the extreme deficiency of our records during that brief period, how important must we presume the physical revolutions to have been in the course of thirty or forty centuries, during which, some countries habitually convulsed by earthquakes have been peopled by civilized nations ! 'l~owns engulphed during one earthquake may, by repeated shocks, have sunk to enormous depths beneath the surface, while their ruins remain as imperishable as the hardest rocks in which they are inclosed. Buildings and cities submerged for a time beneath seas or lakes, and covered with sedimentary deposits, must, in some places, have been re-elevated to considerable heights above the level of the ocean. The signs of these events have probably been rendered visible by subsequent mutations, as by the encroachments of the sea upon the coast, by deep excavations made by torrents and rivers, by the opening of new ravines and chasms, and other effects of natural agents, so active in districts agitated by subterranean movements. If it be asked why if such wonderful monuments exist, so few have hitherto been brought to light-we reply-because they have not been searched for. In order to rescue from oblivion the memorials of former occurrences, we must know what we may reasonably expect to discover; and under what peculiat· local circumstances. 'l'he inquirer, moreover, must be acquainted with the action and effects of physical causes, in order to recognise, explain, and describe, correctly, the phenomena when they present themselves. The best known of the great volcanic regions of which we sketched the boundaries, in the eighteenth chapter, is that which includes Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and Central Asia, yet nearly the whole even of this reg\on must be laid down in a geological map as "Terra Incognita." Even Calabria may be regarded as unexplored, as also Spain, Portugal, CliANGES ON T HE COAST OF THE BAY OF DAIM. 449 the Barbary states the 1 . Cyprus, Syria, a~d the ~~Ian ~sles, the Morea, Asia Minor, Black Seas 'V . untrtes between the Caspian and . e are, 111 truth b . . b . sight into one small f ' egummg too tam some in-spot o that great f 1 . • turbance, the district around Na 1 zone o vo came dis-markable for the violence of the P es, a tract by .no means revulsed it. earthquakes which have con- If, in this part of Cam a . that considerable changes i~ ~~a, w~ ~re tnablcd to establish, have taken place since the Chr~~.re ahve. e~el of land and sea have expected and · t · Is Ian er~, It ~s all that we could ' 1 Is to recent antiquanan and I . l research, not to history that we . . 11 • geo ogiCa 1 • D . ' are prmcipa y mdebted for t 1e mforhmatwnl. We shall proceed to lay before the reader some o t e resu ts of modern investigati . h B . and the adjoining coast. ons In t e ay of Baire !em.Ple of J upi~er. Serapis .-This celebrated monument of antiqmty affords, 111 Itself alone unequivo 1 'd 1 . 1 · 1 ' ca evi ence, t 1at the re atlve eve] of land and sea has chang d t · · · h C · · e Wice at Puzzuoli smce t e hnstian era, and each movement b th f 1 . ' b 'd I 0 su s1 ence 1as exceeded twenty feet Bel! o e e· v·a tion and · wre exammmO' these proofs we may observe, that a geological examination ~f tl coast of the Bay of Baire, both on the north and th f p le I. bl' t . sou o uz-zuo 1, esta 1sues .m the most satisfactory mann er an e1 e vat·w n at no remote penod, of more than twenty feet a 1 th , · de nce of t Iu ·s c h ange would have been complet' nc 'ef ev1i - . e even 1 tle temple had to this day remained undiscove1·ed If 1 • we coast a· ong1 t he1 shore from Naples to Puzzuoli we find , on approac1 1- ~ng ~ 1e atter place, ~hat the lofty and precipitous cliffs of m.dm ated tuff, resembling that of which Naples is built, retire shghtly .from the sea, and that a low level tract of fertile land, of a very different a~pect, intervenes between the present sea-beach and what was evidently the ancient line of coast Th · ] d' l'ff · · · em an c 1 Is I~ many ~ar.ts eighty feet high near Puzzuoli, and as ·p erbp endicular as If It was still undermined by th e waves. A t lts ase, the new de~osit attains a height of about twenty feet abov~ t?e sea, a~d as It cons~sts of I:e~ular sedimentary deposits, contai~mg marme shells, Its positiOn proves that since its format10~1 there has been a change of more than twenty feet in the relative level of land and sea. VoL, I. 2G |