Buffon's Natural History, Volume I (of 10). Comte de Buffon Georges Louis Leclerc
and their mouths at the very summit of them. If the internal fires of the volcanos extended below the plains, would not passages be opened in them during violent eruptions? In the first eruption would not these fires rather have pierced the plains, where, by comparison, the resistance must be infinitely weaker, than force their way through a mountain more than half a league in height.
The reason why volcanos appear alone in mountains, is, because much greater quantities of minerals, sulphur, and pyrites, are contained in mountains, and more exposed than in the plains; besides which, those high places are more subject to the impressions of air, and receive greater quantities of rain and damps, by which mineral substances are capable of being heated and fermented into an absolute state of inflammation.
In short, it has often been observed, that, after violent eruptions, the mountains have shrunk and diminished in proportion to the quantity of matter which has been thrown out; another proof that the volcanos are not situated at the bottom of the mountain, but rather at no great distance from the summit itself.
In many places earthquakes have formed considerable hollows, and even separations in mountains; all other inequalities have been produced at the same time with the mountains themselves by the currents of the sea, for in every place where there has not been a violent convulsion, the strata of the mountains are parallel, and their angles exactly correspond. Those subterraneous caverns which have been produced by volcanos are easily to be distinguished from those formed by water; for the water, having washed away the sand and clay with which they are filled, leaves only the stones and rocks, and this is the origin of caverns upon hills; while those found upon the plains are commonly nothing but ancient pits and quarries, such as the salt quarries of Maestricht, the mines of Poland, &c. But natural caverns belong to mountains: they receive the water from the summit and its environs, from whence it issues over the surface wherever it can obtain a passage; and these are the sources of springs and rivers, and whenever a cavern is filled by any part falling in, an inundation generally ensues.
From what we have related, it is easy to be seen how much subterraneous fires contribute to change the surface and internal part of the globe. This cause is sufficiently powerful to produce very great effects: but it is difficult to conceive how the winds should occasion any sensible alterations upon the earth. The sea appears to be their empire, and indeed, excepting the tides, nothing has so powerful an influence upon the ocean; even the flux and reflux move in an uniform manner, and their effects are regularly the same; but the action of the winds is capricious and violent; they sometimes rush on with such impetuosity, and agitate the sea with such violence, that from a calm, smooth, and tranquil plain, it becomes furrowed with waves rolling mountains high, and dashing themselves to pieces against the rocks and shores. The winds cause constant alterations on the surface of the sea, but the surface of the land, which has so solid an appearance, we should suppose would not be subject to similar effects; by experience, however, it is known that the winds raise mountains of sand in Arabia and Africa; and that they cover plains with it; they frequently transport sand to great distances, and many miles into the sea, where they accumulate in such quantities as to form banks, downs, and even islands. It is also known that hurricanes are the scourge of the Antilles, Madagascar, and other countries, where they act with such fury, as to sweep away trees, plants, and animals, together with the soil which gave them subsistence: they cause rivers to ascend and descend, and produce new ones; they overthrow rocks and mountains; they make holes and gulphs on the earth, and entirely change the face of those unfortunate countries where they exist. Happily there are but few climates exposed to the impetuosity of those dreadful agitations of the air.
But the greatest and most general changes in the surface of the earth are produced by rains, floods, and torrents from the high lands. Their origins proceed from the vapours which the sun raises above the surface of the ocean, and which the wind transports through every climate. These vapours, which are sustained in the air, and conveyed at the will of the winds, are stopped in their progress by the tops of the hills which they encounter, where they accumulate until they become clouds and fall in the form of rain, dew, or snow. These waters at first descend upon the plains without any fixed course, but by degrees hollow out a bed for themselves; by their natural bent they run to the bottom of mountains, and penetrating or dissolving the land easiest to divide, they carry earth and sand away with them, cut deep channels in the plains, form themselves into rivers, and open a passage into the sea, which constantly receives as much water from the land rivers as it loses by evaporation. The windings in the channels of rivers have sinuosities, whose angles are correspondent to each other, so that where the waves form a saliant angle on one side, the other has an exactly opposite one; and as hills and mountains, which may be considered as the banks of the vallies which separate them, have also sinuosities in corresponding angles, it seems to demonstrate that the vallies have been formed, by degrees, by the currents of the sea, in the same manner as the rivers have hollowed out their beds on the earth.
The waters which run on the surface of the earth, and support its verdure and fertility, are not perhaps one half of those which the vapours produce; for there are many veins of water which sink to great depths in the internal part of the earth. In some places we are certain to meet with water by digging; in others, not any can be found. In almost all vallies and low grounds water is certain to be met with at moderate depths; but, on the contrary, in all high places it cannot be extracted from the bowels of the earth, but must be collected from the heavens. There are countries of great extent where a spring cannot be found, and where all the water which supplies the inhabitants and animals with drink is contained in pools and cisterns. In the east, especially in Arabia, Egypt, and Persia, wells are extremely scarce, and the people have been obliged to make reservoirs of a considerable extent to collect the waters as it falls from the heavens. These works, projected and executed from public necessity, are the most beautiful and magnificent monuments of the eastern nations; some of the reservoirs occupy a space of two square miles, and serve to fertilize whole provinces, by means of baths and small rivulets that let it out on every side. But in low countries, where the greatest rivers flow, we cannot dig far from the surface, without meeting with water, and in fields situate in the environs of rivers it is often obtained by a few strokes with a pick-axe.
The water, found in such quantities in low grounds, comes principally from the neighbouring hills and eminences; at the time of great rains or sudden melting of snow, a part of the water flows on the surface, but most of it penetrates through the small cracks and crevices it finds in the earth and rocks. This water springs up again to the surface wherever it can find vent; but it often filters through the sand until it comes to a bottom of clay or solid earth, where it forms subterraneous lakes, rivulets, and perhaps rivers, whose courses are entirely unknown; they must, however, follow the general laws of nature, and constantly flow from the higher grounds to the lower, and consequently these subterraneous waters must, in the end, fall into the sea, or collect in some low place, either on the surface or in the interior part of the earth; for there are several lakes into which no rivers enter, nor from which there are not any issue; and a much greater number, which do not receive any considerable river, that are the sources of the greatest rivers on earth; such as the lake of St. Laurence; the lake Chiamè, from whence spring two great rivers that water the kingdoms of Asam and Pegu; the lake of Assiniboil in America; those of Ozera in Muscovy, that give rise to the river Irtis, and a great number of others. These lakes, it is evident, must be produced by the waters from the high lands passing through subterraneous passages, and collecting in the lowest places. Some indeed have asserted that lakes are to be found on the summit of the highest mountains; but to this no credit can be given, for those found on the Alps, and other elevated places, are all surrounded by much more lofty mountains, and derive their origin from the waters which run down the sides, or are filtered through those eminences in the same manner as the lakes in the plains obtain their sources from the neighbouring hills which overtop them.
It is apparent, therefore, that lakes have existence in the bowels of the earth, especially under large plains and extensive vallies. Mountains, hills, and all eminences have either a perpendicular or inclined situation, and are exposed on all sides; the waters which fall on their summits, after having penetrated into the earth, cannot fail, from the declivity of the ground, of finding issue in many places, and breaking in forms out of springs and fountains, and consequently there will be little, if any water, remain in the mountains. On the contrary, in plains, as the water which filters through the earth can