three quarters of a mile in length, and half a mile over. The water appeared as black as ink, but in a glass it was clear as other water, and bright in running down. It tasted sweet and good. At one end, it runs over its rocky bank, and in several noisy cascades, falls down the face of the mountain to a deep bottom, where a river is formed, that is seen for a considerable way, as it wanders along. The whole is a striking scene. The swarthy loch, the noisy descending streams, clumps of aged trees on the mountain's side, and the various shores and vallies below, afford an uncommon view. It was a fine change of ground, to ascend from the beautiful lake, encompassed with mountains, and adorned with trees, into which was poured from a gaping precipice, a torrent of streams; and see from the reverse of an opposite hill, an impetuous flood de-* scending from the top to the finest points of view in the wildest glens below.

What line I had with me, for experiments on waters and holes, I applied to this loch, to discover the depth, but with three hundred yards of whipcord my lead could reach no ground, and from thence, and the blackness of the water, and the great issuing stream, I concluded, justly I think, that it went down to the great abyss, the vast treasury of waters within the earth. Many such unfathomable lochs.

as this have I seen on the summits of mountains in various parts of the world, and from them, I suppose, the greatest part of that deluge of waters came that drowned the old world. This leads me to say something of the flood.

Many books have been written in relation to this affair, and while some contend for the overflowing of the whole earth to a very great height of waters, and some for a partial deluge only, others will not allow there was any at all. The divine authority of Moses they disregard. For my part I believe the flood was universal, and that all the high hills and mountains under the whole heaven, were covered. The cause was forty days heavy rain, and such an agitaion of the abyss, by the finger of God, as not only broke up the great deep, to pour out water at many places, but forced it out of such bottomless lochs as this I am speaking of on the mountain's top, and from various swallows in many places. This removes every objection from the case of the deluge, and gives water enough in the space of one hundred and fifty days, or five months of thirty days each, to over-top the highest mountains by fifteen cubits, the height designed. The abyss in strong commotion, or violent uproar, by a power divine, could shake the incumbent globe to pieces in a few minutes, and bury the whole ruins in the deep. To

me, then, all the reasoning against the deluge, or for a partial flood appear sad stuff. Were this one loch in Stanemore to pour out torrents of water, down every side, for five months, by a divine force on part of the abyss, as it might very easily, by such means do, the inundation would cover a great part of this land; and if from every loch of the kind on the summits of mountains, the waters in like manner, with the greatest violence, flowed from every side out of the abyss, and that exclusive of the heavy rains, an earthquake should open some parts of the ground to let more water out of the great collection, and the seas and oceans surpass their natural bounds, by the winds forcing them over the earth, then would a universal flood very soon prevail. There is water enough for the purpose, and as to the supernatural ascent of them, natural and supernatural are nothing at all different with respect to God. They are distinctions merely in our conceptions of things. Regularly to move the sun or earth; and to stop its motion for a day; to make the waters that covered the whole earth at the creation, descend into the several receptacles prepared for them; and at the deluge to make them ascend again to cover the whole earth, are the effect of one and the same almighty Power; though we call one natural,

and the other supernatural. The one is the effect of no greater power than the other. With respect to God, one is not more or less natural or supernatural than the other..

But how the waters of the deluge were drawn off at the end of the five months, is another question among the learned. The ingenious Keill, who wrote against the two ingenious theorists, says the thing is not at all accountable in any natural way; the draining off, and drying of the earth, of such a huge column of waters could only be effected by the power of God: natural causes both in decrease and the increase of the waters must have been vastly disproportionate to the effects; and to miracles they must be ascribed. This, I think, is as far from the truth, as the theorists ascribing both increase and decrease to natural causes. God was the performer to be sure in the flood and the going off, but he made use of natural causes in both, that is, of the things he had in the beginning created. The natural causes he is the author of were at hand, and with them he could do the work. The sun evaporated; the winds dried; and the waters no longer forced upwards from the abyss, subsided into the many swallows or swallow-holes, that are still to be seen in many places, on mountains and in vallies;

those on the mountains being necessary to absorb that vast column of waters which rose fifteen cubits above the highest hills.

A swallow is such another opening in the ground as Eldine Hole in Derbyshire,* and in travelling from the Peak to the northern extremity of Northumberland, I have seen many such holes in the earth, both on the hills and in the vales. I have likewise met with them in other countries. By these swallows, a vast quantity of the waters to be sure

* Eldine-Hole in Derbyshire is a mile south of Mamtorr, and four miles east of Buxton. It is a perpendicular gulph or chasm, which I tried to fathom more than once, and sound it by my line, and by the measure of sound at the rate of sixteen feet one twelfth in one second the measure Dr. Halley allows near the earth for the descent of heavy bodies; to be one thousand two hundred and sixty-six feet, or four hundred and twenty-two yards down to the water; but how deep the water is cannot be known. I suppose it reaches to the abyss. This chasm is forty yards long above ground, and ten over at its broadest part: but from the day there is a sloping descent 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, confessed at the gallows, that they threw a poor traveller into this dreadful gulph, after they had robbed him.