Therefore, in the first state of the earth, the globe was internally composed of vitrified matter, as I believe it is at present, above which were placed those bodies the fire had most divided, as sand, which are only fragments of glass; and above these, pumice stones and the scoria of the vitrified matter, which formed the various clays; the whole was covered with water 5 or 600 feet deep, produced by the condensation of the vapours, when the globe began to cool. This water every where deposited a muddy bed, mixed with waters which sublime and exhale by the fire; and the air was formed of the most subtile vapours, which, by their lightness, disengaged themselves from the waters, and surmounted them.
Such was the state of the globe when the action of the tides, the winds, and the heat of the sun, began to change the surface of the earth. The diurnal motion, and the flux and reflux, at first raised the waters under the southern climate, which carried with them mud, clay, and sand, and by raising the parts of the equator, they by degrees perhaps lowered those of the poles about two leagues, as we before mentioned; for the waters soon reduced into powder the pumice stones and other spongeous parts of the vitrified matter that were at the surface, they hollowed some places, and raised others, which in course of time became continents, and produced all the inequalities, and which are more considerable towards the equator than the poles; for the highest mountains are between the tropics and the middle of the temperate zones, and the lowest are from the polar circle to the poles; between the tropics are the Cordeliers, and almost all the mountains of Mexico and Brazil, the great and little Atlas, the Moon, &c. Beside the land which is between the tropics, from the superior number of islands found in those parts, is the most unequal of all the globe, as evidently is the sea.
However independent my theory may be of that hypothesis of what passed at the time of the first state of the globe, I refer to it in this article, in order to shew the connection and possibility of the system which I endeavoured to maintain in the first article. It must only be remarked, that my theory does not stray far from it, as I take the earth in a state nearly similar to what it appears at present, and as I do not make use of any of the suppositions which are used on reasoning on the past state of the terrestrial globe. But as I here present a new idea on the subject of the sediment deposited by the water, which, in my opinion, has perforated the upper bed of earth, it appears to me also necessary to give the reason on which I found this opinion.