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 the foretold moment wading into the earth's shadow, and at last totally obscured.—The revolutions round our axis and in our orbit mock in their precision the most celebrated inventions by which the astonishing art of man has contrived to measure even their shortest periods; and as the fixed stars, from wherever seen upon our earth, must be uniformly visible in the same positions and magnitudes, I could account, at the moment, in no other way for the position of the ocean in which I now found myself, than by supposing we had a ring like Saturn, which, by reason of our atmosphere, could not be seen at such an immense distance, and which was accessible only by a channel so narrow and so guarded by surrounding rocks and whirlpools, that even the vagrancy of modern navigators had never before fallen in with it, they having always hitherto been sent back, like other vagrants, to their original settlements. An unsurmountable objection, however, after a little attention, soon opposed itself to the theory of this sea being on such a ring; because, though