Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/415

 the Sea calm, the Air tranquil; suppose it to be young flood, and that in the term of five or six hours the water do rise ten * hand breadths and more; that rise is not made by the first water, which was said to be rarefied, but it is done by the accession of new Water: Water of the same sort with the former, of the same brackishness, of the same density, of the same weight: Ships, Simplicius, float therein as in the former, without drawing an hairs breadth more water; a Barrel of this second doth not weigh one single grain more or less than such another quantity of the other, and retaineth the same coldness without the least alteration: And it is, in a word, Water newly and visibly entred by the Channels and Mouth of the † Lio. Consider now, how and from whence it came thither. Are there happly hereabouts any Gulphs or Whirle-pools in the bottom of the Sea, by which the Earth drinketh in and spueth out the Water, breathing as it were a great and monstruous Whale? But if this be so, how comes it that the Water doth not flow in the space of six hours in Ancona, in * Ragusa, in Corfu, where the Tide is very small, and happly unobservable? Who will invent a way to pour new Water into an immoveable Vessel, and to make that it rise onely in one determinate part of it, and in other places not? Will you say, that this new Water is borrowed from the Ocean, being brought in by the Straight of Gibraltar? This will not remove the doubt aforesaid, but will beget a greater. And first tell me what ought to be the current of that Water, that entering at the Straights mouth, is carried in six hours to the remotest Creeks of the Mediterrane, at a distance of two or three thousand Miles, and that returneth the same space again in a like time at its going back? What would Ships do that lye out at Sea? What would become of those that should be in the Straights-mouth in a continual precipice of a vast accumulation of Waters, that entering in at a Channel but eight Miles broad, is to give admittance to so much Water as in six hours over-floweth a tract of many hundred Miles broad, & thousands in length? What Tygre, what Falcon runneth or flyeth with so much swiftness? With the swiftness, I say, of above 400 Miles an hour. The currents run (nor can it be denied) the long-wayes of the Gulph, but so slowly, as that a Boat with Oars will out-go them, though indeed not without defalking for their wanderings. Moreover, if this Water come in at the Straight, the other doubt yet remaineth, namely, how it cometh to flow here so high in a place so remote, without first rising a like or greater height in the parts more adjacent? In a word, I cannot think that either obstinacy, or sharpness of wit can ever find an answer to these Objections, nor consequently to maintain the stability of the Earth against them, keeping within the bounds of Nature.