COSMOS. 213 



clay. 67 Here also the fissures of the springs may be traced 

 in determinate directions. 68 There is no portion of the earth, 

 where hot springs, salses and gas-eruptions occur, that has 

 been made the subject of such admirable and complete che- 

 mical investigations as those on Iceland, which we owe to 

 the acute and persevering exertions of Bunsen. Nowhere, 

 perhaps, in such a great extent of country, or so near the 

 surface, is such a multifarious spectacle of chemical decom- 

 positions, conversions, and new formations to be witnessed. 



Passing from Iceland to the neighbouring American con- 

 tinent we find in the State of New York, in the neighbour- 

 hood of Fredonia, not far from Lake Erie, a multitude of 

 jets of inflammable gas (carburetted hydrogen), breaking forth 

 from fissures in a basin of Devonian sandstone strata, and 

 partly employed for the purpose of illumination. Other 

 springs of inflammable gas, near Rushville, assume the form 

 of mud cones ; and others, in the valley of the Ohio, in 

 Virginia, and on the Kentucky river, also contain chloride 

 of sodium, and are there connected with weak naphtha 

 springs. But on the other side of the Caribbean Sea, on the 

 north coast of South America, 11^ miles south-south-east 

 from the harbour of Cartagena de Indias, near the plea- 

 sant village of Turbaco, a remarkable group of salses or 

 mud- volcanoes exhibits phenomena, which I was the first to 

 describe. 



In the neighbourhood of Turbaco, where one enjoys a 

 magnificent view of the colossal snowy mountains (Sierras 

 Nevadas) of Santa Marta, on a desert spot in the midst of 

 the primeval forest, rise the Volcancitos, to the number of 

 18 or 20. The largest of the cones, which consist of blackish 

 gray loam, are from 19 to 23 feet in height, and probably 

 80 feet in diameter at the base. At the apex of each cone 

 is a circular orifice of 20 to 28 inches in diameter, surrounded 

 by a small mud-wall. The gas rushes up with great violence, 

 as in Taman, forming bubbles, each of which, according to 

 my measurements in graduated vessels, contains 10 12 

 cubic inches. The upper part of the funnel is filled with 



67 Sartorius von "\Valtershausen, Plnjsiscli-geoyrapliixclie Sklz:.e von 

 Island, 1847, R. 123; Bunsen "upon the processes of formation of the 

 volcanic rocks of Iceland," Pog^end. Annalen, Bd. Ixxxiii, s. 207. 



68 Waltershausen, op. cit. s. 11 . 



