«If this, tedious expedition have not entirely worn out your patience, let us now take a view of the coast of Ragery itself, from the lofty summit of Fairhead, which overlook it. Westward we see its white cliff rising abruptly from the ocean, corresponding accurately in materials and elevation with those of the opposite shore, and like them, crowned with a venerable load of the same vitrifiable rock. Eastward, we behold it dip to the level of the sea, and soon give place to many beautiful arrangements of basalt pillars which form the eastern end of the island, and lie opposite to the basaltes of Fairhead, affording in every part a reasonable presumption that the two coasts were formerly connected, and that each was created and deranged by the same causes extensively operating over both.
«But it is not in these larger features alone that the similitude may be traced; the more minute and accidental circumstances serve equally well to ascertain it.
«Thus, an heterogeneous mass of freestone, coals, iron-ore, etc. which forms the east side of Ballycastle Bay, and appears quite different from the common fossils of the country, may be traced also directly opposite, running under Rathlin, with circumstances which almost demonstrably ascertain it to be the same vein.
«What I would infer from hence is, that this whole coast has undergone considerable changes; that those abrupt promontories, which now run wildly into the ocean, in proud defiance of its boisterous waves, have been rendered broken and irregular by some violent convulsion of nature; and that the island of Ragery, standing as it were in the midst between this and the Scottish coast, may be the surviving fragment of a large tract of country which, at some period of time, has been buried in the deep.»
Besides this argument of the gradation from a continent of land to a bare rock, we have another from the consideration of those rocks themselves, so far as these could not be formed by nature in their present state, but must have been portions of a greater mass. How, for example, could a perpendicular mountain, such as St. Kilda, have been produced in the ocean? Of whatever materials we shall suppose it formed, we never shall find means for the production of such a mass in its present insulated state. Let us take examples of this kind near our coast, and of known rocks. Staffa and Ailsa, on the west coast, and the Bass, upon the east, are mountains of either whin-stone or granite, similar to many such mountains within the land; and they are perpendicular around, except perhaps on one part. It is demonstrable that such basaltic rock as contains zeolite and calcareous spar, as most of our whin-stones do, could not have been the eruption of a volcano, consequently those rocks must have been masses protruded in a fluid state, under an immense cover of earth at the time of their production; and they could not have risen immediately out of the sea, with all their various minerals, their veins and cutters, their faces and their angles.
In like manner, the east coast of Caithness is a perpendicular cliff of sand-stone, lying in a horizontal position, and thus forming a flat country above the shore. But along this coast there are small islands, pillars, and peninsulas, of the same strata, corresponding perfectly with that which forms the greater mass. Now, shall we suppose those strata of sand-stone to have been formed in their place, and to have reached no farther eastward into the sea?—It is unsupposable. Or, shall we conceive that the sea, which has made such depredations in land composed of much more solid materials, had spared this, and had not wasted much more than that now pointed out by the ruins which remain?—Impossible; we must suppose that there had once existed much land where nothing now is found but sea. But, if we are to suppose much to have been wasted, where shall we stop in this process of restoring continents? That is the question now to be discussed.
With this view, let us now turn our attention to the north-west coast of Europe, in consulting the general as well as the most particular maps. Upon the one extremity of Britain, we find Cornwall separating it as it were from the main land; and, from this promontory, the Scilly Isles pointing out what had been destroyed in that direction, which is here to be considered as the line of greatest resistance. But what a quantity of the soft materials, or less resisting parts on either side, has been destroyed! Upon the other extremity of Britain, we find the country of Scotland, forming itself into promontories and islands, and those islands and rocks pointing out to us what had been the former extent of our continent and land around. But, in following this connection of things, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that Ireland had formerly been in one mass of land with Britain, in like manner as the Orkneys had been with Scotland[16].
Footnote 16:[ (return) ] I have the most satisfactory evidence of this fact, in finding the schistus of Galloway and of England in the opposite coast of Ireland, corresponding to its direction in stretching from the coasts of Britain.
It will be still less possible to refuse the junction of England with the continent of France; the testimony of that peculiar body of chalk and flint, which borders each of those opposite coasts, forms an argument which is irrefragable. Now, in order to complete our continent, we have only to connect the Shetland islands with the coast of Norway. But this is a notion which, however probable it may appear, is not proposed as a fact immediately supported by natural appearances; it is only to be considered as an enlarged view in which we may contemplate the operations of this earth upon a more extended scale; one which may be conceived as a step in our cosmogeny, and one which, while it illustrates the theory of the earth already given, is by no means required in order to confirm a theory founded upon appearances which leave no manner of doubt.