68 DISTRIBUTION OF VOLCANOES. [VI. 



tinental region which may be described as including the Mediterra- 

 nean and Aralo-Caspian basins, extending from the Iberian peninsula 

 eastward to the Thian-Chan Mountains of central Asia. In this 

 great belt, extending over about ninety degrees of longitude, are 

 included all the historic volcanoes of the ancient world, to which 

 we must add the extinct volcanoes of Murcia, Catalonia, Auvergne, 

 the Vivarais, the Eifel, Hungary, etc., some of which have probably 

 been active during the human period. 



It is a most significant fact that this region is nearly coextensive 

 with that occupied for ages by the great civilizing races of the 

 world. From the plateau of central Asia, throughout their west- 

 ward migration to the pillars of Hercules, the Indo-European na- 

 tions were familiar with the volcano and the earthquake ; and that 

 the Semitic race were not strangers to the same phenomena, the 

 whole poetic imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures bears ample evi- 

 dence. In the language of their writers, the mountains are mol- 

 ten ; they quake and fall down at the presence of the Deity, when 

 the melting fire burneth. The fury of his wrath is poured forth 

 like fire ; he toucheth the hills and they smoke ; while fire and sul- 

 phur come down to destroy the doomed cities of the plain, whose 

 foundation is a molten flood. Not less does the poetry and the 

 mythology of Greece and of Home bear the impress of that nether 

 realm of fire in which the volcano and the earthquake have their 

 seat. The influence of these is conspicuous throughout the imagi- 

 native literature and the religious' systems of the Indo-European 

 nations, whose contact with terrible manifestations of unseen forces 

 beyond their foresight or control could not fail to act strongly on 

 their moral and intellectual development ; which would have doubt- 

 less presented very different phases had the early home of tin-t- 

 races been in Australia or on the eastern side of the American conti- 

 nent, where volcanoes are unknown, and earthquakes are scarcely 

 felt. 



Besides the great region just indicated, must be mentioned that 

 of our own Pacific slope, from Fuegia to Alaska, whence, along tin- 

 eastern shore of Asia, a line of volcanic activity extends to the 

 boning mountains of the Indian archipelago. Volcanic islands are 

 widrly scattered over the Pacific basin, and volcanoes are con>pi-u- 

 ous in the Antarctic continent The Atlantic area is in like man- 

 ner marked by volcanic islands from Jan Mayen and Iceland to the 

 Canaries, the Azores, and the Caribbean Islands, and southward to 

 Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan d'Acunha. 



