Gli incanti d’Ismeno, che ingannano con delusioni, altro non significano, che la falsità delle ragioni, et delle persuasioni, la qual si genera nella moltitudine, et varietà de’ pareri, et de’ discorsi humani.
[j] ATLANTIC kings their barbarous pomp display’d;
See Plato’s Timæus; where mention is made of mighty kingdoms, which, in a day and a night, had disappeared in the Atlantic, rendering its waters unnavigable.
[k] When towers and temples, thro’ the closing wave,
Si quæras Helicen et Burin, Achaïdas urbes,
Invenies sub aquis.
At the destruction of Callao, in 1747, no more than one of all the inhabitants escaped; and he, by a providence the most extraordinary. This man was on the fort that overlooked the harbour, going to strike the flag, when he perceived the sea to retire to a considerable distance; and then, swelling mountain high, it returned with great violence. The people ran from their houses in terror and confusion; he heard a cry of Miserere rise from all parts of the city; and immediately all was silent; the sea had entirely overwhelmed it, and buried it for ever in its bosom: but the same wave that destroyed it, drove a little boat by the place where he stood, into which he threw himself and was saved. Europ. Settlements.
[l] “Land!” and his voice in faltering accents died.
Historians are not silent on the subject. The sailors, according to Herrera, saw the signs of an inundated country (tierras anegadas); and it was the general expectation that they should end their lives there, as others had done in the frozen sea, ‘where St. Amaro suffers no ship to stir backwards or forwards.’ F. Columbus, c. 19.
[m] Tho’ chang’d my cloth of gold for amice grey—
Many of the first discoverers, if we may believe B. Diaz and other contemporary writers, ended their days in a hermitage, or a cloister.
[n] ’Twas in the deep, immeasurable cave Of ANDES,
Vast indeed must be those dismal regions, if it be true, as conjectured (Kircher. Mund. Subt. I. 202), that Etna, in her eruptions, has discharged twenty times her original bulk. Well might she be called by Euripides (Troades, v. 222) the Mother of Mountains; yet Etna herself is but ‘a mere firework, when compared to the burning summits of the Andes.’
[o] Where PLATA and MARAGNON meet the Main.
Rivers of South America. Their collision with the tide has the effect of a tempest.
[p] Of HURON or ONTARIO, inland seas,
Lakes of North America. Huron is above a thousand miles in circumference. Ontario receives the waters of the Niagara, so famous for its falls; and discharges itself into the Atlantic by the river St. Lawrence.
[q] Hung in the tempest o’er the troubled main;
The dominion of a bad angel over an unknown sea, infestandole con sus torbellinos y tempestades, and his flight before a Christian hero, are described in glowing language by Ovalle. Hist, de Chile. IV. 8.