224 New Observations on Volcanoes and their LaVas. 



lours ; as the academician of Naples, and father De la Torre, 

 only saw at Vesuvius stones in a natural state, or simply 

 roasted, and calcined of different colours. Thus we ought 

 to regard the work of the French academician merely as a 

 recital, \vhich describes tolerably well the disorder and all the 

 appearances observed in volcanic mountains. 



One incontestable proof that the fires of the volcanoes 

 which range along the valley of Ouito, Cuenca, Riobamba, 

 and Popayan, have their origin below the level of the sea, 

 arises from the frequent and dreadful earthquakes felt on 

 that coast ; and they are owing to the same cause which has 

 raised all these volcanoes, and which sometimes gives birth 

 to new eruptions. Unfortunately for the country, the in- 

 fl.immable substances which are the sources of all these 

 disasters, are not coilsumed ; but v^'hen we reflect upon 

 what has happened in former times in order to raise 

 these enormous and numerous volcanoes, it is evident that 

 the cause which produced them has much diminished. 



I have often had a strong desire to visit that country, the 

 most interesting, perhaps, on the surface of the globe. When 

 it shall be explored by naturalists skilled in the knowledge 

 of volcanoes and volcanic productions, they will, I have no 

 doubt, a,scertain that the state of things is such as I have 

 explained. What still further explains why the French and 

 Spanish travellers never found any marine fossil in this vast 

 part of the Cordelier is, that, every thing there being the 

 work of fire, there could not be any marine productions. 



The height of the peaks of volcanic mountains, which 

 often surpasses that of the most elevated of other chains of 

 mountains, ought not to be considered as a monument of 

 the height at which the sea has been, each of them having 

 been elevated to this point, since its retreat, by the accumu- 

 lation of the substances which had issued from the volcano. 

 We cannot even doubt that these enormous volcanoes had 

 been manifested under the waters of the old sea. 



Ulloa, in his sixteenth discourse, which treats of the fossils 

 and petrifactions of Peru, concludes, from the marine pe- 

 trifactions of the high mountains of Guancavelica, that there 

 ought to be the sumo productions in the other high moun- 

 tains 



