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.

This man that I had was a plain ignorant fellow, and th