CRATERS OP ELEVATION. 229 



mountains, such as Chimborazo, Puy de Dome, Sarcouy, 

 Rocca Monfina and Vultur, give the landscape a peculiar 

 character, by which they contrast pleasingly with the sch's* 

 tose peaks, or the serrated forms of limestone. 



In the tradition preserved to us so picturesquely by Ovid 

 regarding the great volcanic phenomenon of the peninsula of 

 Methone, the production of such a bell-shaped and unopened 

 mountain is indicated with methodical clearness. " The 

 force of the winds imprisoned in dark caves of the eartl , 

 and seeking in vain for an opening, drive up the heaving 

 soil (extentam tumefecit humum), as when one fills a bladder 

 or leather bag with air. By gradual hardening, the high 

 projecting eminence has retained the form of a hill." I have 

 already elsewhere adverted to the fact of how completely 

 different this Roman representation is from Aristotle's 

 narration of the volcanic phenomenon upon Hiera, a newly 

 formed Aeolic (Liparian) Island, in which "the subterra- 

 nean, mightily urging blast does indeed also raise a hill, 

 but afterwards breaks it up to pour forth a fiery shower 

 of ashes." The elevation is here clearly represented as 

 preceding the eruption of flame (Cosmos, vol. i, p 240). 

 According to Strabo, the elevated dome-like hill of Methana 

 had also opened in fiery eruptions, at the close of which an 

 agreeable odour was diffused in the night time. It is very 

 remarkable that the latter was observed under exactly 

 similar circumstances during the volcanic eruption of San- 

 torin, in the autumn of 1650, and was denominated "a 

 consoling sign, that God would not yet destroy his flock," 

 in the penitential sermon delivered and written shortly after- 

 wards by a monk. 86 Does not this pleasant odour afford 



86 It has been a much disputed point, to what particular locality of 

 the plain of Troezen, or the peninsula of Methana, the description of 

 the Roman poet may refer. My friend, Ludwig Ross, the great Greek 

 antiquarian and chorograph, who has had the advantage of many tra- 

 vels, thinks that the immediate vicinity of Troezen presents no locality 

 which can be referred to as the bladder-lifce hills, and that, by a poetic 

 license, Ovid has removed the phenomenon described with such truth 

 to nature, to the plain. " To the south of the peninsula of Methana, 

 and east of the plain of Troezen," writes Ross, "lies the island Calauria, 

 well known as the place where Demosthenes, being pressed by the 

 Macedonians, took poison in the temple of Neptune. A narrow arm of 

 the sea separates the limestone rocks of Calauria from the coast; from 

 this arm of the sea (passage, TTO^OI,') the town and island take their present 



