378 COSMOS. 



are four in number, and of these the Chy-kang (Red Moun- 

 tain), whose crater contains a hot-water lake, has experi- 

 enced great igneous eruptions. The small Baschi Islands 

 and the Babuyans, which so late as 1831, according to 

 Meyen's testimony, experienced a violent eruption of fire, 

 connect Formosa with the Philippines, of which the smallest 

 and most broken islands abound most in volcanoes. Leo- 

 pold von Buch enumerates nineteen lofty isolated conical 

 mountains upon them, which in the country are called vol- 

 canes, though probably some of them are closed trachytic 

 domes. Dana is of opinion that in southern Luzon there 

 are now only two active volcanoes, that of Taal, which 

 rises in the Laguna de Bongbong, with an encircling escarp- 

 ment which incloses another lagoon (see page 243) ; and in 

 the southern portion of the peninsula of Camarines the vol- 

 cano of Albay, or Mayon, which the natives call Isaroe. 

 The latter, which is 3197 feet high, experienced great erup- 

 tions in the years 1800 and 1814. In the northern portion 

 of Luzon granite and mica- slate, and even sedimentary 

 formations together with coal are diffused. 66 



The far-stretching group of the Soolo (Solo) islands, which 

 are fully 100 in number, and which connect Mindanao and 

 Borneo, is partly volcanic, and partly intersected by coral- 

 reefs. Isolated unopened, trachytic, cone-shaped peaks are 

 indeed often called Vulcanes by the Spaniards. 



If we carefully examine all that lies to the south of the 

 fifth degree of north latitude (to the south of the Philippines), 

 between the meridians of the Nicobars and the north-west 

 of New Guinea, thus taking in the Sunda Islands, great and 

 Siberian expedition, and the Asie Centrale, in which the opinion ex- 

 pressed by Klaproth, and which I formerly adopted, respecting the 

 probability of the connection of the snowy mountains of the Himalaya 

 with the Chinese province of Yunan and with Nanling north westward 

 of Canton, has been confuted by me. The mountains of Formosa, 

 upwards of 11,000 feet high, as well as Ta-yu-ling which bounds 

 Fukian to the westward, belong to the system of meridian fissures in 

 Upper Assam, in the country of the Burmese, and in the group of 

 the Philippines. 



66 Dana's Geology, in the Explor. Exped., vol. x, p. 540 545 ; Ernest 

 Hofmann, Geogn. Beob. auf der Reise von Otto v. Kotzebue, p. 70 ; Leop. 

 de Buch, Description Physique des lies Canaries, pp. 435439. See 

 the large and admirable chart of the Islas Filipinas, by the Pilot Don 

 Antonio Morati (Madrid, 1852), in two plates. 



