ON ITS EXTERIOR. VOLCANOES. 227 



and bell-shaped mountains, like Chimborazo, Puy de 

 Dome, Sarcouy, Eocca Monfina, and Vultur, give to the 

 landscape in which they are seen a peculiar character, 

 by which they contrast agreeably with the schistose 

 Horns or the jagged forms of calcareous rock. 



The elevation of such a dome-shaped mount without 

 opening is indicated with great clearness in the very 

 graphic description in which Ovid has preserved the tra- 

 dition of a great volcanic event in the peninsula of 

 Methone. " The powerful force of winds imprisoned 

 in dark caverns, seeking in vain an outlet, caused the 

 inflated ground to swell upwards, as when a bladder or 

 a goat-skin is filled with air. The high swelling by 

 slow hardening has remained a hill." I have remarked 

 elsewhere how entirely this Eoman description differs 

 from Aristotle's account of the volcanic event at Hiera, 

 a newly arisen ^Eolian island : " the subterranean power- 

 fully urging breath" is indeed here also described as 

 raising a hill, but also as " afterwards breaking it up and 

 pouring from it a fiery rain of ashes." Here the eleva- 

 tion is distinctly described as preceding the igneous 

 outburst. (Cosmos, Vol. I. note 230.) According to 

 Strabo it would seem as if the dome-shaped hill of 

 Methana had also opened in a fiery eruption, at the 

 termination of which an agreeable odour diffused itself 

 each night. It is a striking circumstance that a sweet 

 smell was remarked under similar conditions at the 

 volcanic eruption of Santorin in the autumn of 1650, 

 and is mentioned in a sermon, preached soon afterwards 

 by a monk, which has been preserved. ( 31 ) May not 

 such an odour indicate naphtha ? The same thing is 

 spoken of by Kotzebue in his Russian Voyage of Dis- 



Q 2 



