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 land upon this globe might be frustrated. It is only meant
to affirm, that the quantity which those rocks, or that coast, have
diminished from the period of our history, has either been too small
a thing for human observation, or, which is more probable, that no
accurate measurement of the subject, by which this quantity of decrease
might have been ascertained, had been taken and recorded.
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