152 Baron Humboldt on the Mountain- chains and 



mineralogists expressed their astonishment when they heard me 

 speak of the volcanic eruption of the plain of Jorullo, and of the, 

 volcano of Popocatepetl, as still in activity : although the former 

 is only thirty leagues from the sea, and the latter forty-three 

 leagues. Gebel Koldaghi, a conical and smoking mountain of 

 Kordofan, of which Mr Riippel was told at Dongola, is 150 

 leagues from the Red Sea, and this distance is but a third of 

 that at which the Pechan, which for ITOO years has emitted 

 torrents of lava, is situated from the Indian Ocean. The hy- 

 pothesis, conformably to which the Andes present no volcano in 

 activity in those parts where the chain recedes from the «ea, is 

 without foundation. The system of mountains of the Caraccas, 

 which run from east to west, or the chain of the coast of Vene- 

 zuela, is shaken by violent earthquakes, but has no longer 

 apertures which are in permanent communication with the in- 

 terior of the earth, and which discharge lava, than the chain of 

 the Himalaya, which is little more than 100 leagues from the 

 Gulf of Bengal, or the Ghauts, which may almost be termed a 

 coast-chain. Where trachyte has been unable to penetrate 

 across the chains when they have been elevated, they discover 

 no rents; no channels are opened, whereby the subterranean 

 forces can act in a permanent manner at the surface. The re- 

 markable fact of the proximity of the sea wherever volcanoes 

 are still in activity, — a fact which, in general, is not to be de- 

 nied, — seems to be accounted for less by the chemical agency 

 of the water, than by the configuration of the crust of the globe, 

 and the deficiency of resistance, which, in the vicinity of mari- 

 time basins, the upraised masses of the Continent oppose to 

 elastic fluids, and to the efflux of matters in fusion in the interior 

 of our planet. Real volcanic phenomena may occur, as in the 

 old country of the Eleuths, and at Toorfan, to the south of the 

 Teen-shan, wherever, owing to ancient resolutions, a fissure is 

 opened in the crust of the globe at a distance from the sea. The 

 reason why volcanoes in activity are not more rarely remote 

 from the sea, is merely because, wherever an eruption has been 

 unable to force itself through the declivity of continental masses 

 towards a maritime basin, a very unusual concurrence of cir- 

 cumstances is requisite to permit a permanent communication 

 between the interior of the globe and the atmosphere, and tp 



