other storm I find in the Scripture is that “ God shall reign upon the wicked, plagues, fire, and a horrible tempest.” What this shall be, we wait to know; and happy are they who shall be secured from its effects.
Histories are full of instances of violent tempests and storms in sundry particular places. What that was, which mingled with such violent lightnings set the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah on fire, remains to me yet undecided: nor am I satisfied the effect it had on the waters of the lake, which are to this day called the Dead Sea, are such as some fabulous authors have related, and as travellers take upon them to say.
Chapter II
Of the opinion of the Ancients, that this island was more subject to storms than other parts of the world.
I am not of opinion with the early ages of the world, when these islands were first known, that they were the most terrible of any part of the world for storms and tempests.
Cambden tells us, the Britons were distinguished from all the world by unpassable seas and terrible northern winds, which made the Albion shores dreadful to sailors; and this part of the world was therefore reckoned’ the utmost bounds of the northern known land, beyond which none had ever sailed: and quotes a great variety of ancient authors to this purpose; some of which I present as a specimen.
Et Penitus Toto Divisos Orbe Britannos.
Britain’s disjoined from all the well known world.
Quem Littus adusta,
Horrescit Lybiae ratibusq; Impervia 1 — Thule. Ignotumq; Fretum. — Claud.
And if the notions the world then had were true, it would be very absurd for us who live here to pretend miracles in any extremes of tempests; since by what the poets of those ages flourished about stormy weather, was the native and most proper epithet of the place:
Belluosus qui remotis
Obstrepit Oceanus Britannis. — Hor.
Nay, some are for placing the nativity of the winds here-abouts, as if they had been all generated here, and the confluence of matter had made this island its general rendezvous.
But I shall easily show, that there are several places in the world far better adapted to be the general receptacle or centre of vapours, to supply a fund of tempestuous matter than England; as particularly the vast lakes of North America, of which afterwards.
Lowlands of England.
And yet I have two notions, one real, one imaginary, of the reasons which gave the ancients such terrible apprehensions of this part of the world; which of late we find as habitable and navigable as any of the rest.
The real occasion I suppose thus: that before the multitude and industry of inhabitants prevailed to the managing, enclosing, and improving the country, the vast tract of land in this island which continually lay open to the flux of the sea, and to the inundations of land-waters, were as so many standing lakes; from whence the sun continually exhaling vast quantities of moist vapours, the air could not but be continually crowded with all those parts of necessary matter to which we ascribe the original of winds, rains, storms, and the like.
He that is acquainted with the situation of England, and can reflect on the vast quantities of flat grounds, on the banks of all our navigable rivers, and the shores of the sea, which lands at least lying under water every spring tide, and being thereby continually full of moisture, were like a stagnated standing body of water brooding vapours in the interval of the tide, must own that at least a fifteenth part of the whole island may come into this denomination.
Let him that doubts the truth of this, examine a little the particulars; let him stand upon Shooters Hill in Kent, and view the mouth of the river Thames, and consider what a river it must be when none of the marshes on either side were walled in from the sea, and when the sea without all question flowed up to the foot of the hills on either shore, and up every creek, where he must allow is now dry land on either side the river for two miles in breadth at least, sometimes three or four, for above forty miles on both sides the river.
Let him farther reflect, how all these parts lay when, as our ancient histories relate, the Danish fleet came up almost to Hartford; so that all that range of fresh marshes which reach for twenty-five miles in length, from Ware to the river Thames, must be a sea.
In short, let any such considering person imagine the vast tract of marsh-lands on both sides the river Thames, to Harwich on the Essex side, and to Whitstable on the Kentish side, the levels of marshes up the Stour from Sandwich to Canterbury, the whole extent of the low-grounds commonly called Rumney-marsh, from Hythe to Winchelsea and up the banks of the Rother; all which put together, and being allowed to be in one place covered with water, what a lake would it be supposed to make? According to the nicest calculations I can make, it could not amount to less than 500,000 acres of land.
The isle of Ely, with the flats up the several rivers from Yarmouth to Norwich, Beccles, &c., the continued levels in the several counties of Norfolk, Cambridge, Suffolk, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Lincoln, I believe do really contain as much land as the whole county of Norfolk; and it is not many ages since these countries were universally one vast Moras or Lough, and the few solid parts wholly unapproachable: insomuch that the town of Ely itself was a receptacle for the malecontents of the nation, where no reasonable force could come near to dislodge them.
It is needless to reckon up twelve or fourteen like places in England, as the moores in Somersetshire, the flat shores in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Durham, the like in Hampshire, and Sussex; and in short, on the banks of every navigable river.
The sum of the matter is this; that while this nation was thus full of standing lakes, stagnated waters, and moist places, the multitude of exhalations must furnish the air with a quantity of matter for showers and storms, infinitely more than it can be now supplied withal, those vast tracts of land being now fenced off, laid dry, and turned into wholesome and profitable provinces.
This seems demonstrated from Ireland, where the multitude of loughs, lakes, bogs, and moist places, serve the air, with exhalations, which give themselves back again in showers, and make it be called, the pisspot of the world.
The imaginary notion I have to advance on this head, amounts only to a reflection upon the skill of those ages in the art of navigation; which being far short of what it is since arrived to, made these vast northern seas too terrible for them to venture in: and accordingly, they raised those apprehensions up to fable, which began only in their want of judgment.
Britain’s Navigation Dangerous.
The Phonecians, who were our first navigators, the Genoese, and after them the Portugese, who arrived to extraordinary proficiency in sea affairs, were yet all of them as we say, fair-weather seamen; the chief of their navigation was coasting; and if they were driven out of their knowledge, had work enough to find their way home, and sometimes never found it at all; but one sea conveyed them directly into the last ocean, from whence no navigation could return them. When these, by adventures, or misadventures rather, had at any time extended their voyaging as far as this island, which, by the way, they, always performed round the coast of Spain, Portugal, and France; if ever
