, which we may compare with the present state of things.
Here, again, we are disappointed; their descriptions of the shores of
Greece and of Italy, and their works upon the coast, either give no
measure of a decrease, or are not accurate enough for such a purpose.

It is in vain to attempt to measure a quantity which escapes our notice,
and which history cannot ascertain; and we might just as well attempt to
measure the distance of the stars without a parallax, as to calculate
the destruction of the solid land without a measure corresponding to the
whole.

The description which Polybius has given of the Pontus Euxinus, with
the two opposite Bosphori, the Meotis, the Propontis, and the Port of
Byzantium, are as applicable to the present state of things as they were
at the writing of that history. The filling up of the bed of the
Meotis, an event which, to Polybius, appeared not far off, must also be
considered as removed to a very distant period, though the causes still
continue to operate as before.

But there is a thing in which history and the present state of things do
not agree. It is upon the coast of Spain, where Polybius says there was
an island in the mouth of the harbour of New Carthage. At present, in
place of the island, there is only a rock under the surface of the
water. It must be evident, however, that the loss of this small island
affords no proper ground of calculation for the measure or rate of
wasting which could correspond to the coast in general; as neither
the quantity of what is now lost had been measured, nor its quality
ascertained.

Let us examine places much more exposed to the fury of the waves and
currents than the coast of Carthagena, the narrow fretum, for example,
between Italy and Sicily. It does not appear, that this passage is
sensibly wider than when the Romans first had known it. The Isthmus of
Corinth is also apparently the same at present as it had been two or
three thousand years ago. Scilla and Charibdis remain now, as they had
been in ancient times, rocks hazardous for coasting vessels which had to
pass that strait.

It is not meant by this to say, these rocks have not been wasted by the
sea, and worn by the attrition of moving bodies, during that space of
time; were this true, and that those rocks, the bulwarks of the land
upon those coasts, had not been at all impaired from that period, they
might remain for ever, and thus the system of interchanging the place of
sea and