CRATERS OF ELEVATION. 219 



jecting eminence has retained the form of a hill." I have 

 already elsewhere adverted to the fact of how completely 

 different this Roman representation is from Aristotle's nar- 

 ration of the volcanic phenomenon upon Hiera, a newly- 

 formed JEolic (Liparian) island, in which " the subterranean, 

 mightily urging blast does indeed also raise a hill, but after- 

 ward breaks it up to pour forth a fiery shower of ashes." 

 The elevation is here clearly represented as preceding the 

 eruption of flame (Cosmos, vol. i., p. 241). According to 

 Strabo, the elevated dome-like hill of Methana had lilso 

 opened in fiery eruptions, at the close of which an agreeable 

 odor was diffused in the night-time. It is very remarkable 

 that the latter was observed under exactly similar circum- 

 stances during the volcanic eruption of Santorin, in the au- 

 tumn of 1650, and was denominated " a consoling sign, that 

 God would not yet destroy his flock," in the penitential ser- 

 mon delivered and written shortly afterward by a monk.* 



* It has been a much disputed point to what particular locality of 

 the plain of Troezen, or the peninsula of Methana, the description of 

 the Roman poet may refer. My friend, Ludwig Ross, the great Greek 

 antiquarian and chorograph, who has had the advantage of many 

 travels, thinks that the immediate vicinity of Troezen presents no 

 locality which can be referred to as the bladder-like hills, and that, 

 by a poetic license, Ovid has removed the phenomenon described with 

 such truth to nature to the plain. " To the south of the peninsula of 

 Methana, and east of the plain of Troezen," writes Ross, "lies the 

 island Calauria, well known as the place where Demosthenes, being 

 pressed by the Macedonians, took poison in the temple of Neptune. 

 A narrow arm of the sea separates the limestone rocks of Calauria 

 from the coast; from this arm of the sea (passage, Tropof) the town 

 and island take their present name. In the middle of the strait, 

 united with Calauria by a low causeway, probably of artificial origin, 

 lies a small conical islet, comparable in form to an egg cut through 

 the middle. It is volcanic throughout, consisting of grayish yellow 

 and yellowish red trachyte, mixed with eruptions of lava and scoriae, 

 and is almost entirely destitute of vegetation. Upon this islet stands 

 the present town of Poros, on the place of the ancient Calauria. The 

 formation of the islet is exactly similar to that of the more recent 

 volcanic islands in the Bay of Thera (Santorin). In his animated 

 description, Ovid has probably followed a Greek original or an old 

 tradition" (Ludw. Ross, in a letter to me dated November, 1845). 

 As a member of the French scientific expedition, Virlet has set up 

 the opinion that the volcanic upheaval may have been only a subse- 

 quent increase of the trachytic mass of the peninsula of Methana. 

 This increase occurs in the northwest extremity of the peninsula, 

 where the black burned rock, called Kammeni-petra, resembling the 

 Kammeni, near Santorin, betrays a more recent origin. Pausanias 

 communicates the tradition of the inhabitants of Methana, that, on 

 the north coast, before the now-celebrated sulphurous springs burst 



