210 COSMOS. 



northern province Schan-si. When it has a reddish flame, 

 the gas often diffuses a bituminous odor ; it is transferred 

 partly in portable and partly in lying bamboo tubes to re- 

 mote places, for use in salt-boiling, for heating the houses, 

 or for lighting the streets. In some rare cases supply of 

 carbureted hydrogen gas has been suddenly exhausted, or 

 stopped by earthquakes. Thus we know that a celebrated 

 Ho-tsing, situated to the southwest of the town of Khiung- 

 tscheu (latitude 50 27 X , longitude 101 6' East), which 

 was a salt spring burning with noise, was extinguished in 

 the 13th century, after it had illuminated the neighborhood 

 from the second century of our era. In the province of 

 Schan-si, which is so rich in coal, there are some ignited 

 carbonaceous strata. Fiery mountains (Ho-schan) are dis- 

 tributed over a great part of China. The flames often rise 

 to a great height, for example, in the mass of rock of tho 

 Py-kia-schan, at the foot of a mountain covered with perpef 

 ual snow (lat. 31 40'), from long, open, inaccessible fissures 

 a phenomenon which reminds us of the perpetual fire of the 

 Shagdagh mountain in the Caucasus. 



On the island of Java, in the province of Samarang, at a 

 distance of about fourteen miles from the* north coast, there 

 are salses similar to those of Turbaco and Galera Zamba. 

 Very variable hills of 25 to 30 feet in height throw out mud, 

 salt-water, and a singular mixture of hydrogen gas and car- 

 bonic acid* a phenomenon which is not to be confounded 

 with the vast and destructive streams of mud which are 

 poured forth during the rare eruptions of the true, colossal 

 volcanoes of Java ( Gunung Kelut and Gunung Idjen). Some 

 mofette grottoes or sources of carbonic acid in Java are also 

 very celebrated, particularly in consequence of exaggerations 

 in the statements of some travelers, as also from their con- 

 nection with the myth of the Upas poison-tree, already men- 

 tioned by Sykes and Loudon. The most remarkable of the 

 six has been scientifically described by Junghuhn, the so- 

 called Vale of Death of the island (Pakaramari) in the mount- 

 ain Die'ng, near Batur. It is a funnel-shaped sinking on the 

 declivity of a mountain, a depression in which the stratum 

 of carbonic acid emitted attains a very different height at 



* According to Diard, Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 515. Besides the mud 

 volcanoes of Damak and Surabaya, there are upon other islands of the 

 Indian Archipelago the mud volcanoes of Pulu-Semao, Pulu-Kam- 

 bing, and Pulu-Koti ; see Junghuhn, Java, seine Gestalt und Pflanzen- 

 decke, 1812, abth. iii., s. 830. 



