718 ON THE VOLCANO OF TAAL, 



However, it is fortunate for the theory that it does not depend 

 for its support on such reasoning. It has a much more powerful, 

 and, to my mind, convincing support from the present configuration 

 of the sides of the lake. There we find that its margin is in very 

 many places formed of high cliffs, sixty or seventy ft. in height, 

 and in a few localities, such as Macolod, &c., the waters are con- 

 fronted by precipices between 2,000 and 3,000 feet high. To quote 

 from Senor Centeno : " If we observe Mt. Macolod with a height 

 of 966 metres and the rapid slopes of its sides toward Cuenca, and 

 its equally sudden breaking ofi' at the water's edge, we cannot help 

 seeing that we have here only a fragment of what this original 

 mountain has been, and that some extraordinaiy change has taken 

 place since it was deposited in strata of ash. If we observe the 

 opposite portion of the laguna we shall see that the coi'dillera 

 called Tagatay — which is the limit of the lake to the north, and is 

 terminated on the east by Mt. Sungay — has meridional slopes of 

 rapid inclination, which terminate in escarpments on the side of 

 the lake ; such, for instance, as Mahabangbato in the village of 

 Banga, in Balit-Bii^ing and in Kalukan. In the precipitous 

 escarpments one can see clearly the horizontal stratification which 

 shows an abrupt breaking off of the slope, which at one time 

 extended uninterruptedly from the top of the mountain to the 

 Bay of Manila." 



Seiior Centeno has carried these considerations a little further, 

 and has speculated on what must have been the former height of 

 this mountain. By jirolonging the slope from the Bay of Manila 

 to the Pico Hong Castila, a distance of about 20 miles, and from 

 thence continuing the projection of the same inclined plane in a 

 south-east direction, while on the opposite side of the lake the 

 slope between Cuenca and Mt. Macolod is projected in a north-west 

 direction, the two lines will meet over a point in the lake about 

 3 miles to the eastward of the present crater. This would give a 

 height to the former volcano of about 12,500 ft. above the level of 

 the sea, a height which is almost exactly that of Semiru in Java, 

 and the well-known Fuji-San or Fuji-Yama in Japan. The whole 

 of the details of this calculation are most interesting, and bear uj)on 



