212 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



but failed, owing to the cone being surrounded by deep ravines, and pronounces the ascent 

 to the crater impossible. This is the highest of the Andean volcanoes which have recently 

 been in an active state. If the 3932 feet of Vesuvius were planted upon the top of Etna, 

 which has an elevation of 10,873, Cotopaxi would not be equalled in altitude by 4073 

 feet. Its eruptions have been upon a scale corresponding with its magnitude. In 1738 

 its fires ascended 2953 feet above the crater, and in 1744 its voice was heard at Honda, 

 on the river Magdalena, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles. In 1768 the inha- 

 bitants of two neighbouring towns were obliged to use lanterns by day in the streets, 

 owing to the quantity of ashes ejected, and at two hundred miles' distance Humboldt and 

 Bonpland heard its noises day and night, like the discharges of a battery, during the 

 explosion of 1803. 



A second line of volcanic action, upon as gigantic a scale as the preceding, commences 

 at one of the most western points of North America, the peninsula of Alaska, in latitude 

 55. It pursues a western course for about two hundred geographical miles, embracing 

 the Aleutian isles, and reaching 4o the opposite coast of Kamtschatka. Throughout the 

 whole of this tract earthquakes are of frequent occurrence, and the bed of the sea and the 

 surface of the land are often altered by their tremendous violence. Seven active volca- 

 noes are found at the southern extremity of the peninsula of Kamtschatka, and from 

 thence the chain trends to the Kurile isles, where nine more are known to have been in 

 eruption. Still southerly, the line extends to the Japanese group, where there are a con- 

 siderable number, and where the disruption of the surface of the land in some districts 

 is almost incessant, and sometimes violent. Passing the tropic of Cancer, the range 

 embraces the Loo Choo archipelago, the Philippine and Ladrone islands, and is prolonged 

 south to New Guinea. Here it branches off in a vast transverse line, extending on the 

 one hand into the heart of the Pacific, and on the other through Java and Sumatra into 

 the Bay of Bengal. 



A third chain traverses the whole of the southern part of the European continent, a 

 distance of above a thousand geographical miles. It commences at the Azores, and ex- 

 tends to the Caspian Sea, having for its northern* boundaries the Tyrolian and Swiss 

 Alps, and for its southern bounds the northern kingdoms of Africa. This district has 

 frequently been visited with earthquakes, those of Lisbon and Calabria causing the 

 whole continent to vibrate at the shock. Etna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli are at present 

 the chief active vents, but anciently Vesuvius was in a state of torpor, and the island of 

 Ischia was the scene of volcanic explosion. This small spot, about eighteen miles in cir- 

 cumference, now containing a population of twenty-five thousand, was frequently abandoned 

 by its inhabitants on account of its violent convulsions. Before the Christian era, 

 the Erythreans, the Chalcidians, and a colony established by Hiero king of Syracuse, 

 were successively driven from it. Ischia however sunk into repose, which has not since 

 been disturbed, only with one exception, when Vesuvius, in the year 79, burst forth from 

 the stillness of ages, and overwhelmed the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii with its ashes. 

 The eruptions of Etna are mentioned as occurring from the earliest periods to which his- 

 tory and tradition extend. Thucydides speaks of three between the colonization of Sicily 

 by the Greeks and the commencement of the Peloponnesian war in the year B. C. 431. 

 It was a fable of the Greek mythology, that the giant Typhos was confined beneath 

 Sicily, his outstretched limbs extending under the Italian peninsula, and the terrible 

 natural phenomena of the region were assigned to the struggles of the imprisoned 

 monster. Pindar, in his first Pythian ode, says : " The sea-girt heights above Cuma, and 

 Sicily too, press upon his shaggy breast ; and the pillar of heaven, snowy Etna, the 

 perennial nurse of sharp pinching snow, holds him fast. From the recesses of Etna are 

 vomited forth the purest streams of fire, immeasurable in extent. By day the fiery 



