

ON ITS EXTERIOR. VOLCANOES. 353 



islands and the Blynie islands, which stand somewhat 

 apart ; amongst these Attu forms, as we have already 

 said, the transitional link with the Asiatic " Commandeur 

 group" (Copper and Bering's Islands). There appears to 

 be but little foundation for the often repeated statement, 

 that the line of continental volcanoes in the peninsula of 

 Kamtschatka, directed from N.KE.to S.S.W., only begins 

 at the place where the volcanic elevation fissure of the 

 Aleutian islands, passing under the sea, intersects the 

 peninsula ; thus representing the Aleutian fissure as a 

 channel of conduction. According to Liitke's map . of 

 Bering's Sea, the island of Attu, the westernmost extre- 

 mity of the Aleutian Islands, is in 52 46' lat., and the 

 non-volcanic Copper and Bering's islands are in 54 30' 

 and 55 20', while the line of Kamtschatkan volcanoes 

 commences in 56 40' with the great volcano of Schi- 

 welutsch, west of Cape Stolbowoy. The direction of the 

 eruptive fissures is also very different, almost opposite. 

 The loftiest of the Aleutian volcanoes, that in Unimak, 

 is, according to Liitke, 8076 feet high. Near to the 

 north point of Umnak, in May 1796, the island of 

 Agaschagokh (or Sanctus Johannes Theologus) was up- 

 heaved from the sea under very remarkable circum- 

 stances, which are extremely well described in Kotzebue's 

 Voyage of Discovery (Bd. ii. S. 106); and it continued 

 burning for almost eight years. According to an 

 account communicated by Krusenstern, it was, in 1819, 

 almost 16 geographical miles in circumference, and still 

 upwards of 2200 feet high. On the island of Unalaschka, 

 the relations assigned by the ingenious Chamisso of the 

 trachyte containing much hornblende of the volcano Ma- 

 tuschkin (5474 feet high) to the black porphyry (?) and 



VOL. IV. A A 



