336 COSMOS. 



not well be termed a volcano. It appears to me rather to 

 present an analogy with the Chimaera in Lycia, near Delik- 

 tash and Yanartash, which was so early known to the Greeks. 

 This is a stream of fire, an issue of gas constantly kindled by 

 volcanic action in the interior of the earth (see p'age 243, 

 note f). 



Arabian writers inform us, though for the most part with- 

 out quoting any precise year, that lava eruptions have taken 

 place during the Middle -4g es on tne southwestern shore of 

 Arabia, in the insular chain of the Zobayr, in the Straits of 

 Bab-el-Mandeb and Aden (Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, vol. 

 ii., p. 466-468), in Hadhramaut, in the Strait of Ormuz, and 

 at different points in the western portion of the Persian Gulf. 

 These eruptions have always occurred on a soil which had 

 already been in pre-historical times the seat of volcanic ac- 

 tion. The date of the eruption of a volcano at Medina it- 

 self, 12^ northward of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, was 

 found by Burckhardt in Samhudy's Chronicle of the famous 

 city of that name in the Hedjaz. It took place on the 2d 

 November, 1276. According to Seetzen, however, Abulma- 

 hasen states that an igneous eruption had occurred there in 

 1254, which is twenty-two years earlier (see Cosmos, vol. i., 

 p. 246). The volcanic island of Djebeltair, in which Vincent 

 recognized the " burned-out island" of the Periplm Maris Ery- 

 thrcei, is still active, and emits smoke, according to Botta and 

 the accounts collected by Ehrenberg and Russegger (Reisen in 

 Europa, Asien, und Africa, bd. ii., th. 1, 1843, s. 54). For in- 

 formation respecting the entire district of the Straits of Bab- 

 el-Mandeb, with the basaltic island of Perim the crater-like 

 circumvallation, within which lies the town of Aden the 

 island of Seerah with streams of obsidian, covered with pum- 

 ice the island groups of the Zobayr and the Farsan (the 

 volcanic nature of the latter was discovered by Ehrenberg in 

 1825), I refer my readers to the interesting researches of Rit- 

 ter, in his Erdkunde von Asien, bd. viii., abth. 1, s. 664-707, 

 889-891, and 1021-1034. 



The volcanic mountain chain of the Thian-schan (Asie Cen- 

 trale,t.i., p. 201-203 ; t. ii., p. 7-51), a range which intersects 

 Central Asia between Altai and Kuen-lun from east to west, 

 formed at one period the particular object of my investiga- 

 tions, so that I have been enabled to add to the few notices 

 obtained by Abel-Remusat from the Japanese Encyclopaedia, 

 some fragments of greater importance discovered by Klaproth, 

 Neumann, and Stanislas Julien (Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 39-50 



