Volcanoes of Central Asia. 153 



form apertures, which, like intermittent warmVsprings, effuse, 

 instead of water, gases and oxidized earths in fusion, in other 

 words, lava. 



To the eastward of Pechan, the *' White Mountain*" of the 

 Eleuths, the whole northern slope of the Teen-shan presents 

 volcanic phenomena : " lava and pumice-stone are seen there, 

 and even considerable solfataras, which are called ' fiery places."* 

 The solfatara of Ouroumtsi is five leagues in circumference ; 

 in winter it is not covered with snow ; it is supposed to be 

 full of ashes. If a stone be thrown into this basin, flames issue 

 forth, as well as a black smoke, which continues some time. Birds 

 dare not fly over these fiery places."' Eastward, sixty leagues 

 from Pechan, is a lake of very considerable extent, the diffe- 

 rent names of which in the Chinese, Kirghiz, and Calmuc lan- 

 guages, signify, " warm salt and ferruginous water." 



If we cross the volcanic chain of the Teen-shan, we find 

 E. S. E. of lake Issikoul (so often mentioned in the itineraries 

 which I have collected), and of the volcano of the Pechan, the 

 volcano of Toorfan, which may also be called the volcano of 

 Ho-chow (" City of Fire"), for it is very near that city *. M. 

 Abel Remusat has made particular mention of this volcano in 

 his Histoire de Khoten, and in his letter to M. Cordier f. No 

 reference is made to stony masses in fusion (torrents of lava), 

 there, as at Pechan ; but " a column of smoke is seen continu- 

 ally to issue ; this smoke gives place at night to a flame like that 

 of a torch. Birds and other animals upon which the light falls, 

 appear of a red colour. The natives, when they go thither to 

 collect the nao-s?ia, or sal-ammoniac, put on wooden shoes, for 

 leather soles would be very soon burned." Sal-ammoniac is pro- 

 cured at the volcano of Ho-tcheou, not only in the form of a crust 

 or sediment, according as it is deposited by the vapours which 

 exhale it; but Chinese books likewise make mention " of a 

 greenish liquor collected in cavities, which is boiled and evapo- 



• Ho-chow, a city, now destroyed, was a league and a half to the east of 

 Toorfan. 



t M . Remusat calls the volcano of Pechan, to the north of Koutche, the 

 volcano of Bishbalik. From the time of the Mongols in China, all the coun- 

 try between the northern slope of the Teen-shan and the little chain of the 

 Tarbagatay has been called Bishbalik. 



