u de monumens qui
indiquent la hauteur qu'avoit anciennement le sol."

There are but two ways in which those appearances may be explained; one
of these is that which M. Bouguer has adopted; the other, again, belongs
to the present Theory, which represents the action of running water upon
the surface of the earth as instrumental in producing its particular
forms, and thus forming many natural appearances upon the surface of the
earth. The first of these, viz. that a mass of solid land, in such a
shape as that here described, should remain while all around it sinks,
is an opinion which, however possible it may be, is not supported, I
believe, by any example in nature; the last again, viz. that the parts
around those insulated masses, and those that had intervened between the
corresponding mountains, have been carried away by the natural operation
of the rivers, is not only the most easy to conceive, but is also, so
far as those operations are concerned, conform to every appearance upon
the surface of the globe. It is not necessary to go to South America,
and the rivers of the Cordeliers, for examples to illustrate that which
every one may see performed almost at his own door; but it is there that
an example has occurred, which, though it has imposed upon an eminent
philosopher, cannot properly be employed in support of any other theory
but the present. Our author proceeds:

"Je ne connois les environs de l'Orenoque que par relation, mais je
scais qu'en plusieurs endroits les montagnes y sont egalement formees de
couches horizontales, et qu'elles ont souvent en haut des plateformes
qui sont exactement de niveau. On ne trouve a ce que je crois rien de
semblable au Perou malgre la variete presque infinie qui y est repandue.
Toutes les couches y vont en s'inclinant autour de chaque sommet, en se
conformant a la pente des collines."

It would appear that it is a rare thing to find a great extent of
indurated strata in a horizontal position. Now, this circumstance is
necessary in affording the appearances here considered; those particular
appearances, therefore, are only to be found more partially in other
places, where the strata are inclined. If here, therefore, where the
strata are horizontal, and where the spaces between the summits of those
mountains had evidently been as solid as the masses which remain, we
find mountains formed by the waste of land, and a system of rivers
forming valleys amidst these mountains, Have we