GEOLOGY. 627 



The great lava floods sometimes present a tolerably 

 smooth surface, like that of a river which has descended 

 peaceably from the mountain heights to the bottom of the 

 valley. The lava then forms a ready-made road, and I 

 have traversed several which the fire of the volcano seemed 

 to have thus prepared for the wants of man. But more 

 frequently these immense lava fields, as is seen in the ap- 

 proaches to Etna, Hecla, and so many other volcanoes, are 

 contorted and broken, like a furious sea which the wand of 

 a fairy had suddenly transformed into fractured and black- 

 ened rocks, only that they are still more horrible than any 

 sea. A man who lost himself for many hours in these 

 frightful solitudes would infallibly perish. 



Some volcanoes in their eruptions throw out mud, and 

 these occasionally constitute a very remarkable phenome- 

 non. A very learned Japanese writer, Tit-singh, relates 

 that in 1793 a volcano of the island of Kiou-siou, one of 

 the largest of the empire, suddenly ejected such torrents of 

 liquid matter that more than 50,000 of the inhabitants per- 

 ished, swept away by the waves. Similar circumstances 

 have taken place in America. A large village near the 

 equator was destroyed in 1797 by a river of volcanic mud. 1 



tended with a melancholy loss of life, over twenty persons being killed on the 

 spot, or mortally injured, by the lava and mephitic fumes from two cracks which 

 suddenly opened in the ground where they were standing for the purpose of wit- 

 nessing the magnificent spectacle. The villages of San Sebastiano and Massa di 

 Somma were, to a great extent, destroyed by the lava. See Volcanoes and 

 Earthquakes, published by Blackie & Son.] 



1 [Instances of submarine volcanic eruptions are not uncommon, and the Bay 

 of Santorin, the ancient Thera, in the Grecian Archipelago, contains several 

 small islands which owe their origin to this cause. The last eruption occurred in 

 1866. It began about the end of January, with a noise like a heavy cannonade. 



