The Gehon is obviously
the Guadiana, which begins with a "G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia,
is incontestably the Euphrates, of which the initial letter is "E."
But a Scotsman appears who _demonstrates_ in his turn that the garden of
Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is to be
believed that in a few centuries this opinion will make its fortune.
The whole globe was burned once upon a time, says a man versed in
ancient and modern history; for I read in a newspaper that some
absolutely black charcoal has been found in Germany at a depth of a
hundred feet, between mountains covered with wood. And it is suspected
even that there were charcoal burners in this place.
Phaeton's adventure makes it clear that everything has boiled right to
the bottom of the sea. The sulphur of Mount Vesuvius proves invincibly
that the banks of the Rhine, Danube, Ganges, Nile and the great Yellow
River are merely sulphur, nitre and Guiac oil, which only await the
moment of the explosion to reduce the earth to ashes, as it has already
been. The sand on which we walk is evident proof that the earth has been
vitrified, and that our globe is really only a glass ball, just as are
our ideas.
But if fire has changed our globe, water has produced still finer
revolutions. For you see clearly that the sea, the tides of which mount
as high as eight feet in our climate, has produced mountains of a height
of sixteen to seventeen thousand feet.
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