[AU] See Abridg. Philosophical Trans. vol. IV. p. 234. On Mount Stella, in Portugal, is a lake in which the wrecks of ships have been found, notwithstanding this mountain is more than 12 leagues from the sea.[AV] Sabinius, in his Commentaries on Ovid's Metamorphoses, says, that in the year 1460 a ship, with its anchors, was found in a mine of the Alps. [AV] See Gordon's Geography, page 149. It is not in Europe alone we meet with these vicissitudes of land into sea and sea into land; other parts of the world might furnish more remarkable, and in a greater number, if investigated with precision. Calecut was formerly a famous city and the capital of a kingdom of that name; at present it is only a trifling town, meanly built, and but thinly inhabited: the sea, which for a century has gained greatly on this coast, has overflowed the greatest part of the old city, with a beautiful fortress of stone which was therein. Vessels at present moor on their ruins, and the port is filled with a great number of shoals, and on which ships are frequently wrecked.[AW] [AW] See Letters Edifiantes Recueil 11. page 187. The province of Jucatan, a peninsula in the gulph of Mexico, was formerly a part of the sea. This neck of ground extends 100 leagues in length, and is not more than 25 leagues at its greatest breadth. The air is perfectly hot and moist. Although there are neither rivulets nor rivers throughout so long a space, the water is every where so nigh the surface as to furnish plenty; and, by opening the earth, so great a number of shells are found as to leave no doubt that this great extent may be regarded as a place which formerly was part of the sea. The inhabitants of Malabar pretend that formerly the Maldivian islands were attached to the Indian continent, and that the violence of the sea has divided them from it. The number of these islands is so great, and some of the channels, which separate them, are so narrow, that the boltsprits of vessels which pass them tear off the leaves of the trees on each side, and in some places an active man, by holding by the branch of a tree, may leap into another island.[AX] [AX] See the Dutch Travels to the East-Indies, page 274. The cocoa-trees, which are at the bottom of the sea, is a proof that the Maldivians were formerly part of the continent: cocoa-nuts are often detached from them and thrown on the shore by a storm. It is imagined that the island of Ceylon was formerly united to the continent, and that the currents, which are extremely rapid in many parts of India, have divided that as well as Rammanakoil, and many other islands.[AY] However, it is certain that the island of Ceylon has lost 30 or 40 leagues of ground towards the north-west side, which the sea has gained. [AY] See the Dutch Travels to the East-Indies, vol. II. p. 486.