Volume 2

Travels in North-America, in the years 1780, 1781, and 1782 / By the Marquis de Chastellux ; Translated from the French by an English gentleman [J. Kent]. Who resided in America at that period ; with notes by the translator.

Chastellux, François Jean, marquis de, 1734-1788.

Date:: 1787

Credit: Travels in North-America, in the years 1780, 1781, and 1782 / By the Marquis de Chastellux ; Translated from the French by an English gentleman [J. Kent]. Who resided in America at that period ; with notes by the translator. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$perfuadéd that all this part of the Conti- nent is not of new creation, and produced entirely by fucceflive ebbings of the water. On the other hand, if we obferve that al] the high mountains form long chains pa- rallel with each other, and ‘almoft in a di- rection North and South’; that the greateft “part of the rivers, which fall into’ the ocean, take their origin in the narrow vallies which feparate thefe mountains, and that after fol- lowing their dire&tion for a confiderable fpace, : they turn fuddenly towards the Eaft, pierce the mountains, and at length reach _the fea, acquiring magnitude as they pro- ceed ; we fhall be apt to think ourfelves, if not contemporaries, at leaft not far removed. from that epoch of Nature, when the waters collected to an extraordinary height in hol- low vallies, were ftriving to break down their dykes, {till uncertain of the means to .be adopted’ for making their efcape; we fhall be led to think that the motion of the earth on its axis, or the wefterly winds, which in North America correfpond with the trade winds of the Tropics, and of which er are PRES the effect, have at length$