60 VIEWS OF NATUKE. 



near the surface, but that they are great and deep-seated phe- 

 nomena. The whole of the eastern portion of the American 

 continent, which is poor in metals, has in its present condi- 

 tion no fire-emitting openings, no trachytic masses, and 

 perhaps no basalt containing olivine. All the volcanos of 

 America are united in the portion of the continent opposite to 

 Asia, along the chain of the Ancles, which runs nearly due 

 north and south over a distance of more than 7200 miles. 



The whole elevated table -land of Quito, which is surmounted 

 by the high mountains of Pichincha, Cotopaxi, and Tunguragna, 

 constitutes one sole volcanic hearth. The subterranean fire 

 bursts sometimes from one and sometimes from another of 

 these openings, which have generally been regarded as inde- 

 pendent volcanos. The progressive movement of the fire 

 has, for three centuries, inclined from north to south. Even 

 the earthquakes, which so fearfully devastate this portion 

 of the globe, afford striking evidence of the existence of sub- 

 terranean communications, not only between countries where 

 there are no volcanos — as has long been known — but likewise 

 between volcanic apertures situated at a distance from each 

 other. Thus the volcano of Pasto, cast of the river Guay tara, 

 continued during three months of the year 1797, to emit, 

 uninterruptedly, a lofty column of smoke, until it suddenly 

 ceased at the moment of the great earthquake of Piobamba, 

 (at a distance of 240 miles.) and the mud eruption of the 

 k " Moya," in which from thirty to forty thousand Indians 

 perished. 



The sudden appearance, on the 30th of January, 1811, of 

 the island of Sabrina, in the group of the Azores, was the 

 precursor of the dreadful earthquakes which, further westward, 

 • )k. from May, 1811, to June, 1813, almost uninterruptedly, 

 first the Antilles, then the plains of the Ohio and Mississippi, 

 and lastly, the opposite coasts of Venezuela or Caracas. Thirty 

 days after the total destruction of the beautiful capital of the 

 province, there was an eruption of the long inactive volcano 



