SALSES. 209 



and in the south-east of the great mountain chain, the 

 naphtha-springs and naphtha-fire of Baku and the Caspian 

 peninsula, Apscheron. The magnitude and connection of 

 this phenomenon was, however, first discovered by Abich, 

 distinguished by his profound knowledge of this part of 

 Asia. According to him, the mud-volcanoes and naphtha- 

 fires of the Caucasus are arranged in a distinctly recognisable 

 manner in certain lines, which stand in unmistakeable rela- 

 tion with the axes of elevation and the directions of dislo- 

 cation of the strata of rock. The greatest space, of nearly 

 4,000 square miles, is occupied by genetically connected 

 mud-volcanoes, naphtha-emanations and saline springs in 

 the south-eastern part of the Caucacus, in an isosceles 

 triangle, the base of which is the shore of the Cas- 



be derivable from the accidental similarity of sound in the misunderstood 

 name of a mountain. There are better arguments, of which Klausen also 

 mentions one. From the actual association of Typhon and the Caucasus, 

 and from the express testimony of Pherecydes of Syros (in the time of 

 the 58th Olympiad), it is clear that the eastern extremity of the world 

 was regarded as a volcanic mountain. According to one of the Scholia 

 to Apollonius (Scholia in Apoll. Rhod., ed. Schaeiferi, 1813, v. 1210, 

 p. 524), Pherecydes says, in the Theogony, "that Typhon, when pur- 

 sued, fled to the Caucasus, and that then the mountain burnt (or was 

 set on fire); that from thence Typhon fled to Italy, when the island 

 Pithecusa was thrown around (as it were, poured around) him." But 

 Pithecusa is the island ^Enaria (now Ischia), upon which the Epomeus 

 (Epopon) cast forth fire and lava, according to Julius Obsequens, 95 

 years before our era, then during the reigns of Titus and Diocletian, 

 and lastly, in the year 1302, according to the statement of Tolomeo 

 Fiadoni of Lucca, who was at that time Prior of Santa Maria Novella. 

 " It is singular," as Boeckh, the profound student of antiquity, writes to 

 me, " that Pherecydes should make Typhon fly from the Caucasus 

 because it burnt, as he himself is the originator of subterraneous fire; 

 but that his residence upon the Caucasus rests upon the occurrence of 

 volcanic eruptions there, appears to me to be undeniable." Apollonius 

 Rhodius (Argon, lib. ii, v. 1212 1217, ed. Beck) in speaking of the birth 

 of the Colchian Dragon, also places in the Caucasus the rock of Typhon, 

 on which the giant was struck by the lightning of Jupiter. Although the 

 lava-streams and crater-lakes of the high land of Kely, the eruptions of 

 Ararat and Elburuz, or the currents of obsidian and pumice-stone from 

 the old craters of the Puotandagh, may be placed in a pre-historic 

 period, still the many hundred flamos which even now break forth 

 from fissures in the Caucasus, both from mountains of seven or eight 

 thousand feet in height and from broad plains, may have been a suffi- 

 cient reason for regarding the entire, mountain district of the Caucasus 

 as a Typhonic seat of fire. 



VOL. Y. P 



