TRUE VOLCANOES. 435 



(Mont Blanc) with its lava-streams, and the still burning 



believed to be a single range running east and west ; that is to say, a 

 parallel-chain. Strabo was aware of this, for he says, " the Greeks call 

 the half of the region of Asia looking to the north this side the Taurus, 

 and the half towards the south that side" (lib. ii, p. 129). In the later 

 times of Ptolemy, however, when commerce in general, and particularly 

 the silk-trade, became animated, the appellation of Imaus was trans- 

 ferred to a meridian chain, the Bolor, as many passages of the 6th book 

 show (Asie Centr. t. i, pp. 146162). The line in which, parallel to the 

 equator, the Taurus range intersects the whole region, according to 

 Hellenic ideas, was first called by Dicaearchus, a pupil of the Stagirite, 

 a Diaphragma (partition-wall), because, by means of perpendicular lines 

 drawn from it, the geographical width of other points could be measured. 

 The diaphragma was the parallel of Rhodes, extended on the west to 

 the pillars of Hercules, and on the east to the coast of Thinse (Agathe- 

 meros in Hudson's Geogr. Gr. Min., vol. ii, p. 4). The divisional line of 

 Dicaearchus, equally interesting in a geological and an orographical point 

 of view, passed into the work of Eratosthenes, who mentions it in the 

 3rd book of his description of the earth, in illustration of his table of 

 the inhabited world. Strabo places so much importance on this direc- 

 tion and partition line of Eratosthenes that he (lib. i, p. 65) thinks it 

 possible " that on its eastern extension, which at Thinse passes through 

 the Atlantic Sea, there might be the site of another inhabited world, 

 or even of several worlds ;" although he does not exactly predict that 

 they will be found to exist. The expression "Atlantic Sea" may 

 seem remarkable as used instead of the " eastern sea," as the south sea 

 (the Pacific) is usually called, but as our Indian Ocean, south of Bengal, 

 is called in Strabo the Atlantic South Sea, so were both seas to the 

 south-east of India considered to be connected, and were frequently 

 confounded together. Thus, we read, lib. ii, p. 130, " India, the largest 

 and most favoured country, which terminates at the eastern sea and 

 at t'iie Atlantic South Sea," and again, lib. xv, p. 689, "the southern 

 and eastern sides of India, which are much larger than the other sides, 

 run into the Atlantic Sea," in which passage, as well as in the one 

 above quoted regarding Thinse (lib. i, p. 65), the expression " eastern sea" 

 is even avoided. Having been uninterruptedly occupied since the year 

 1792 with the strike and inclination of the mountain-strata, and their 

 relation to the bearings of the ranges of mountains, I have thought 

 it right to point attention to the fact that, taken in the mean, the 

 equatorial distance of the Kuen-liin, throughout its whole extent, as 

 well as in its western prolongation by the Hindu-Kho, points towards 

 the basin of the Mediterranean Sea and the Straits of Gibraltar (Asie 

 Centr., t. i, pp. 118 127, and t. ii, pp. 115 118), and that the sinking 

 of the bed of the sea in a great basin which is volcanic, especially on 

 the northern margin, may very possibly be connected with this up- 

 heaval and folding in. My friend, Elie de Beaumont, so thoroughly 

 acquainted with all that relates to geological bearing?, is opposed to 

 these views on loxodromical principles (Notice sur les Syttcmcs de 

 Afontagnes, 1852, t. ii, p. 667). 



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