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JOURNEY OF MAUPERTUWIS. 255
Should it be no other than a fport of nature, the reputation which the ftone bears in
this country deferves that we fhould have given the defcription of it.
This ftone does not certainly poffefs the beauty of the monuments of Greece or Rome;
but if what is on it be an in{cription, it very poflibly has the advantage of being the oldett
in the univerfe. The country in which it is found is mhabited only by a race of men
who live like beafts in the forefts: we cannot imagine that they can have ever had any
memorable event to tranfmit to pofterity, nor if ever they had had, that they could ever
have invented the means. Nor can it be conceived that this country, with its prefent
afpect, ever pofleffed more civilized inhabitants. The rigour of the climate, and the
barrennefs of the land, have deftined it for the retreat of a few miferable wretches who
know no other.
It feems therefore that our infcription muft have been cut at a period when this country
was fituated in a different climate, and before fome one of thofe great revolutions which
we cannot doubt have taken place in our globe. The pofition that its axis holds at prefent,
with refpeét of the ecliptic, occafions Lapland to receive the fun’s rays very obliquely ;
it is thereby condemned to a winter long and fatal to man, as well as to all the produce
tions of nature, its land is barren and a defart.
No great movement poflibly in the heavens was neceflary to caufe all its misfortunes.
Thefe regions may formerly have been thofe on which the fun fhone moft favourably :
the polar circles may have been what now the tropics are, and the torrid zone have
filled the place now occupied by the temperate. But how could the fituation of the
axis of the earth be changed? If attention be paid to the motion of the celeftial bodies,
but too many caufes may be feen capable of producing this and even greater changes.
If the knowledge of anatomy, of all the parts and all the fprings which caufe the mo-
tion of our bodies, occafions thofe acquainted with it to wonder how the machine can
poflibly laft fo long, the fame may be faid of aftronomy. The knowledge of the celef-
tial movements difcovers to us many caufes which could effect not only upon our earth,
but on the general fyftem of the univerfe, material changes.
The variation in the obliquity of the ecliptic, which feveral aftronomers confider as
demonttrated by the obfervations of the ancients, compared with our own, might of
itfelf, after a long lapfe of ages, have produced changes fimilar to thofe we fpeak of.
The obliquity at which the equator of the earth at prefent cuts the ecliptic, which at
prefent is no more than 234°, may poflibly be the remainder of a much greater obliquity,
during which the poles may have been in the temperate or the torrid zone, and have
had the fun at their zenith.
Whether there may have been fuch changes, or more fudden ones, it is certain there
has been fome. The print of fifh, and fifh themfelves petrified, which are found in
countries moft remote from the fea, and even upon the fummits of mountains, are in-
conteftible proofs of thefe places having been formerly low and covered with water.
Sacred hiftory teaches us that the waters formerly covered the higheft mountains.
- Such an inundation it would be difficult to imagine, without the tran{pofition of the
centre of gravity of the earth, and of its climates.
If repugnant to the allowance of {uch changes, the infcription at Winfo may be con-
"ceived to owe its origin to fome event as fingular as our voyage. An infcription which
fhould contain the hiilory of the operation which we went to this country to effect, might
in fome future day perhaps be as obfcure as this is now; and if all the feiences were to
be loit, who could then difcover, who could imagine, that fuch a monument had been
the work of Frenchmen; and tbat what was cut thereon was the meafurement of the
degrees of the earth, and the folution of its figure.
s I leave
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