430 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



spoken of by Strabo as distinguishing the geography of Lydia, about forty stadia, or five 

 miles, apart ; but we may infer the inaction of the volcanoes in his time, and for a long 

 period before, or otherwise the fact would have been known and recorded. From the foot 

 of each of the cones, a flood of rugged black vesicular lava has streamed, encircling their 

 bases, and flowing down the inclined face of the country towards the bed of the Hermus. 

 In the same region there are upwards of thirty other cones, of a more ancient date than 

 the preceding, as their surfaces show a long course of smoothing from atmospheric influence 



Valley of the Catecucaumene. 



and aqueous action, whereas the dark and cindSvy sides of the former are rough and 

 undecomposed. From the silence of history, the age of thirty centuries is at least due to 

 the more recent cones, and a greater antiquity belongs to the rest. Tims the Catecu- 

 caumene bears silent testimony to physical changes in the remote past, and yet it proclaims 

 the uniformity of those causes of disturbance to which our planet for ages has been 

 subject. 



The action of earthquakes, to which we now glance, is a far more potent cause of 

 change in the condition of the terrestrial superficies than that of volcanoes, and far more 

 tremendous to the human race, affecting those level sites upon which they congregate, and 

 often transpiring without a warning. The volcano generally gives preparatory signals of 

 an eruption, by denser columns of smoke issuing from the crater, and loud rumbling 

 sounds proceeding from the interior ; its immediate effects are commonly confined either 

 to the mountain itself, or to a scanty area around it : but in the case of an earthquake, the 

 suddenness of the crisis, the extent of its influence, and the nature of the event the very 

 ground rocking beneath the feet of its inhabitants render the visitation the most 

 formidable physical source of peril with which our species have to contend. Both 

 phenomena have unquestionably a common origin, and hence in countries where active 

 volcanoes exist, the people are in expectation of an earthquake, if the former, which 

 operate as a kind of safety-valve, remain long in complete repose. The Creoles of South 

 America distinguish two kinds of earthquakes by the terms tremblores and terremotos. 

 The tremblores are slight tremors of the ground, which effect no derangement of the 

 surface, are in some districts of daily occurrence, and transpire with perfect security to 



