TRUE VOLCANOES. 395 



The result of this laborious work, on which I have long 



I7'.n;i. in like manner the destruction of Caraccas appears to have been 

 the effect of the reaction of a southerly volcano of the Antilles — that 

 of St. Vincent. The frightful subterranean noise, like the thundering 



of cannon, produced by a violent eruption of the latter volcano on the 

 80th of April, 1 S I l» , was heard on the distant grass-plains (Idanos) of 

 Calabozo, and on the shores of the Rio Apure, L92 geographical miles 

 farther to the West than its junction with the Orinoco (Humboldt, 

 '<!i/e, t. ii., p. 14). The volcano of St. Vincent had thrown out no 

 lava since 1718, but on the 30th of April a stream of lava flowed from 

 the summit crater and in four hours reached the sea-shore. It was a 

 very striking circumstance, and one which has been confirmed to me 

 by very intelligent coasting mariners, that the noise was very much 

 stronger on the open sea, far from the island, than near the shore. 



The volcano of the island of St. Lucia, commonly called only a sol- 

 fatara, is scarcely 1200 to 1800 feet high. In the crater are several 

 small basins periodically filled with boiling water. In the year 17GG 

 an ejection of scoriae and cinders is said to have been observed, which 

 is certainly an unusual phenomenon in a solfatara; for, although the 

 careful investigations of James Forbes and Poulett Scrope leave no 

 room to doubt that an eruption took place from the Solfatara of Poz- 

 zuoli in the year 1198, yet one might be inclined to consider that 

 event as a collateral effect produced by the great neighboring volcano, 

 Vesuvius (see Forbes, in the Edinb. Journal of Science, vol. i., p. 128, 

 and Poulett Scrope, in the Transact, of the Geol. Soc, 2d Ser., vol. ii., 

 p. 316). Lancerote, Hawaii, and the Sunda Islands furnish us with 

 analogous examples of eruptions at exceedingly great distances from 

 the summit craters, the peculiar seat of action. It is true the sol- 

 fatara of Pozzuoli was not disturbed on the occasion of great erup- 

 tions of Vesuvius in the years 1794, 1822, 1850, and 1855 (Julius 

 Schmidt, Ueber die Eruption des Vesuvs im Mai, 1855, p. 156), though 

 Strabo (lib. v., p. 215), long before the eruption of Vesuvius, speaks 

 of fire, somewhat vaguely, it is true, in the scorched plains of Dica- 

 archia, near Cumcea and Phlegra. Dicaarchia in Hannibal's time re- 

 ceived the name of Puteoli from the Romans, who colonized it. 

 "Some are of opinion," continues Strabo, "on account of the bad 

 smell of the water, that the whole of that district, as far as Baiaj and 

 Cumcea, is so called because it is full of sulphur, fire, and warm wa- 

 ter. Some think that on this account Cumcea (Cumanus ager) is 



called also Phlegra ;" and then again Strabo mentions discharges 



of fire and water (" 7rpoxoag rov irvpug ko.1 tov vSaTog"). 



The recent volcanic action of the island of Martinique, in the Mon- 

 tagne Pelee (according to Dupuget, 4706 feet high), the Vauclin and 

 the Pitons du Carbet, is still more doubtful. The great eruption of 

 vapor on the 22d of January, 1792, de*scribed by Chisholm, and the 

 shower of ashes of the 5th of August, 1851, deserve to be more thor- 

 oughly inquired into. 



The Soufriere de la Guadeloupe, according to the older measure- 

 ments of Amic and Le Boucher, 5435 and 5109 feet high, but, accord- 

 ing to the latest and very correct calculations of Charles Sainte-Claire 

 Deville, only 4867 feet high, exhibited itself on the 28th of Septem- 

 ber, 1797, 78 days before the great earthquake and the destruction of 

 the town of Cumana, as a volcano ejecting pumice (Rapport fait au 



