THE MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS OF NATURE. 775 



Echoes are frequently mentioned that repeat the sound six or seven 

 times. Such an echo is said hy Pliny to have heen at a portico in 

 Olympia ; another echo, described by Gassendi, near the grave of Me- 

 tella, repeated a verse of the " iEneid " eight times. Addison heard in 

 Italy a pistol-shot echoed fifteen times. An echo in the county of 

 Argyll repeats the sound eight times after equal pauses, but with di- 

 minishing force. These phenomena are favored by the neighborhood 

 of rocks, caves, and bodies of water. Pierre de Castellane, a French 

 officer who served in Algiers, relates that he heard an echo repeated a 

 thousand times on the mountain-road to Bel- Abbes ; it seemed to pass 

 from one mountain to another, and to resound from side to side. Ad- 

 miral Wrangell, in his work on Siberia, tells of an echo at Teheki, near 

 Kirensk, on the Lena, where a pistol-shot is repeated more than a hun- 

 dred times among the high rocks, and seems like a volley of musketry, 

 but of the force of a cannon-shot. 



Partly of the nature of the echo are the peculiar tones which are 

 produced by the wind or the sea in rocky places. The learned Jesuit 

 Kircher describes several such phenomena as sounding like the twang- 

 ing of the harp, like an organ, or like bells. They have been noticed 

 in Tartary, in Sweden, on the banks of the Guatemala Lake, and at a 

 waterfall in the province of Kiang-si, China. Pausanias speaks of 

 the tuneful waves of the iEgean Sea ; Professor Bruder has perceived 

 the chord of the third of C sharp in them. The experiments of the 

 brothers Heim have made it probable that the resonant property re- 

 sides in some quality of the waters ; and Oersted has discussed the 

 subject of the " Harmony of Waterfalls " in his work on the " Spirit 

 of Nature." 



The agency of echoes is also observed in the music of grottoes. A 

 fearful sound has been said to be emitted from the grotto of Smaland 

 near Wibourg, in Finland, as if a living animal were imprisoned there. 

 Similar sounds are attributed to grottoes in Switzerland and the island 

 of Hispaniola. A cave near Barable in Hungary gives out a noise like 

 that of a pistol-shot. Harmonious, soothing tones prevail in other 

 caves, as in Fingal's Cave, Staff a, where the falling water-drops, the 

 breezes, and the rolling waves striking upon the basaltic columns, com- 

 bine to make it a real cave of melodies. The accord of tones in this 

 cave is no doubt attributable in a great degree to the symmetry of its 

 shape, and the regularity of the form and arrangement of the basaltic 

 columns. Other musical sounds proceed from the bosom of a rock 

 called the Piedra de Carichana Vieja, on the banks of the Orinoco ; 

 they begin at sunrise, and are attributed to the action of changes of 

 temperature. The musical sounds which are heard on the heights be- 

 tween Mount Sinai and the Gulf of Suez, the bell-tones of the Djebal 

 Nakus rock in the Red Sea, and the noises like thunder in the region of 

 Sinai which are mentioned by Burckhardt, are caused by the rolling of 

 the sands among the rocks. 



