TBTTE VOLCANOES. 257 



ing column of vapour. Polybius, who displays a singularly 

 exact knowledge of the state of the crater, connects the 

 multifarious signs of an approaching change of wind, with 

 the myth of the earliest sojourn of JEolus upon Strongyle, 

 and still more with observations upon the then violent fire 

 upon Volcano (the " holy island of Hepha3stos"). The fre- 

 quency of the igneous phenomena has of late exhibited some 

 irregularity. The activity of Stromboli, like that of Etna, 

 according to Sartorius von Waltershausen, is greatest in 

 November and the winter months. It is sometimes inter- 

 niDted by isolated intervals of rest j but these, as we learn 

 from the experience of centuries, are of very short dura- 

 tion. 



The CTiimcera in Lycia, which has been so admirably 

 described by Admiral Beaufort, and to which I have twice 

 referred, 51 is no volcano, but a perpetual burning spring a 

 51 Cosmos, vol. i, p. 220, and vol. v, p. 212. Albert Berg, who had 

 previously published an artistic work, Physiognomic der Tropischen 

 Vegetation von Siidamerika, visited the Lycian Chimaera, near Delik- 

 tasch and Yanartasch, from Rhodes and the Gulf of Myra in 1853. 

 (The Turkish word tdsch signifies stone, as ddgh and tdgh, signify moun- 

 tain; deliktasch signifies perforated stone, from the Turkish, delik, a 

 hole.} The traveller first saw the serpentine rocks near Adrasau, whilst 

 Beaufort met with the dark-coloured serpentine deposited upon lime- 

 stone, and perhaps deposited in it, even near the island Garabusa (not 

 Grambusa), to the south of Cape Chelidonia. " Near the ruius of the 

 ancient temple of Vulcan rise the remains of a Christian church in the 

 later Byzantine style : the remains of the nave and of two side chapels. 

 In a fore-court, situated to the east, the flame breaks out of a fire-place- 

 like opening about 2 feet broad and 1 foot high in the serpentine rock. 

 It rises to a height of 3 or 4 feet and (as a naphtha-spring ?) diffuses a 

 pleasant odour, which is perceptible to a distance of 40 paces. Near 

 this large flame, and without the chimney-like opening, numerous very 

 small, constantly ignited, lambent flames make their appearance from 

 subordinate fissures. The rock which is in contact with the flame is 

 much blackened, and the soot deposited is collected to alleviate 

 smarting of the eye-lids and especially for colouring the eye-brows. 

 At a distance of three paces from the flame of the Chimaera the heat 

 which it diffuses is scarcely endurable. A piece of dry wood ignites 

 when it is held in the opening and brought near the flame without 

 touching it. Where the old ruined walls lean against the rock, gas also 

 pours forth from the interstices of the stones of the masonry, and this, 

 probably from its being of a lower temperature or differently composed 

 does not iguite spontaneously, but whenever it is brought in contact 

 with a light. Eight feet below the great flame in the interior of the 

 ruins there is a *<Hind opening, 6 feet in depth, but only 3 feet wide, 



VOL. V. S 



