ON ITS EXTERIOR. VOLCANOES. 403 



phurous vapours. An eye-witness, the missionary 

 Miertsching, interpreter to the expedition, found 

 thirty or forty columns of smoke which rose from 

 earth-fissures or from small conical elevations of 

 clays of many colours. The smell of sulphur was so 

 strong that one could hardly approach within twelve 

 paces of the columns of smoke. No rock in situ, or 

 solid masses, were found. Luminous phenomena were 

 seen at night from the ship ; no eruptions of mud were 

 observed, but great heat of the sea-bottom, and also 

 small basins of sulphuric acid and water. The district 

 deserves to be carefully examined. This phenomenon is 

 not to be connected with the volcanic activity of the 

 Californian Cascade mountains, the Cerro de Buen 

 Tiempo, or of Mount Elias. (M'Clure, Discovery of 

 the North-West Passage, p. 99 ; Papers relating to the 

 Arctic Expeditions, 1854, p. 34; Miertsching's Keise 

 Tagebuch, Grnadau 1855, S. 46.) 



I have thus far described in their internal connection, 

 and in ascending order, the volcanic vital activities of 

 our planet ; the great and mysterious phenomenon of 

 the reaction of the molten interior against the surface 

 covered with vegetable and animal organic life. Next 

 in succession to the almost purely dynamical effects of 

 earthquakes (of the waves of commotion), I have placed 

 thermal springs and salses, i. e. phenomena which, 



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