TRUE VOLCANOES. 409 



depressions to which, throughout a large tract of country, 

 this central part of Asia has been exposed, have called forth 

 exceptionally, on the convexity of the continental swelling, 

 conditions similar to those produced on the littoral borders 

 of the fissures of elevation ? 



From reliable accounts rendered to the Emperor Kanghi, 

 we are acquainted with the existence of an extinct volcano 

 far to the east, in the northwestern Mantschurci, in the 

 neighborhood of Mergen (probably in lat. 48?,° and long. 

 122° 20 / east). The eruption of scoria) and lava from the 

 mountain of Bo-shan or Ujun-Holdongi (the Nine Hills), 

 from 12 to 16 miles in a southwesterly direction from Mar- 

 gen, took place in January, 1721. The mounds of scoria? 

 thrown out on that occasion, according to the report of the 

 persons sent by the Emperor Kanghi to investigate the cir- 

 cumstances, were 24 geographical miles in circumference ; it 

 was likewise mentioned that a stream of lava, damming up 

 the water of the River Udelin, had formed a lake. In the 

 7th century of our era the Bo-shan is said to have had a 

 previous igneous eruption. Its distance from the sea is 

 about 420 geographical miles, similar to that of the Hima- 

 laya,* so that it is upward of three times more distant than 



* It is not in the Himalaya range, near the sea (some portions of it, 

 between the colossal Kunchinjinga and Shamalari, approach the shore 

 of the Bay of Bengal within 428 and 376 geographical miles), that the 

 volcanic action has first burst forth, but in the third, or interior, parallel 

 chain, the Thian-shan, nearly four times as far removed from the 

 Fame shore, and that under very special circumstances, the subsidence 

 of ground in the neighborhood deranging strata and causing fissures. 

 "We learn, from the study of the geographical works of the Chinese, 

 first instigated by me and afterward continued by my friend Stanislas 

 Julien, that the Kuen-lun, the northern boundary range of Thibet, the 

 Tsi-shi-shan of the Mongols, also possesses in the hill of Shin-Khieu 

 a cavern emitting uninterrupted flames (Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 427-467 

 and 483). The phenomenon seems to be quite analogous to the Chi- 

 mtera in Lycia, which has now been burning for several thousands of 

 years (see above, p. 243-5, and note *); it is not a volcano, but a 

 fire-spring, diffusing to a great distance an agreeable odor (probably 

 from containing naphtha?). The Kuen-lun, which, like me in the 

 Asie Centrale (t. i., p. 127, and t. ii., p. 431), Dr. Thomas Thomson, 

 the learned botanist of Western Thibet {Flora I?idica, 1855, p. 253), 

 describes as a continuation of the Hindu-Kho, which is joined from 

 the southeast by the Himalaya chain, approaches this chain at its west- 

 ern extremity to such a degree that my excellent friend, Adolph Schla- 

 gintweit, designates " the Kuen-liin and the Himalaya on the west side 

 of the Indus, not as separate chains, but as one mass of mountains." (Re- 

 port No. ix. of the Magnetic Survey in India, by Ad. Schlagintweit, 1856, 

 p. 61.) In the whole extent toward the east, however, as far as 92° 20' 

 east longitude, in the direction of the starry lake, the Kuen-liin forms, 

 Vol. V.— S 



