244 COSMOS. 



The number and form of the small fiery chasms are very va- 

 riable. Spallanzani's description of the bottom of the cra- 

 ter, which was long regarded as exaggerated, has been com- 

 pletely confirmed by an experienced geognosist, Friedrich 

 Hoffmann, and also very recently by an acute naturalist, 

 A. de Quatrefages. One of the incandescent chasms has an 

 opening of only 20 feet in diameter; it resembles the pit 

 of a blast-furnace, and the ascent and overflow of the fluid 

 lava are seen in it every hour, froin a position on the margin 

 of the crater. The ancient, permanent eruptions of Strombo- 

 li still sometimes serve for the guidance of the mariner, and, 

 as among the Greeks and Romans, afford uncertain predic- 

 tions of the w^eather, by the observation of the direction of 

 the flame and of the ascending column of vapor. Polybius, 

 who displays a singularly exact knowledge of the state of the 

 crater, connects the multifarious signs of an approaching 

 change of wind with the myth of the earliest sojourn of ^o- 

 lus upon Strongyle, and still more with observations upon the 

 then violent fire upon Volcano (the " holy island of Hephaes- 

 tos "). The frequency of the igneous phenomena has of late 

 exhibited some irregularity. The activity of Stromboli, like 

 that of iEtna, according to Sartorius von Waltershausen, is 

 greatest in November and the winter months. It is some- 

 times interrupted by isolated intervals of rest ; but these, as 

 we learn from the experience of centuries, are of very short 

 duration. 



The Chimcera in Lycia, which has been so admirably de- 

 scribed by Admiral Beaufort, and to which I have twice re- 

 ferred,* is no volcano, but a perpetual burning spring — a gas 



* Cosmos; vol. i., p. 223, and vol. v., p. 203. Albert Berg, who had 

 previously pubhshed an artistic work, Physiognomie der Tropisclien 

 Vegetation von Siidamerika, visited the Lycian Chimera, near Delik- 

 tasch and Yanartaseh, from Rhodes and the Gulf of Myra, in 1853. 

 (The Turkish word tdsch signifies stone, as dagh and.tdgh signify mount- 

 ain; deliktasch signifies perforated stone, from the Turkish delik, a 

 hole.) The traveler first saw the serpentine rocks near Adrasan, while 

 Beaufort met with the dark-colored serpentine deposited upon lime- 

 stone, and perhaps deposited in it, even near the island Garabusa (not 

 Grambusa), to the south of Cape Chelidonia. "Near the ruins of the 

 ancient temple of Vulcan rise the remains of a Christian church in the 

 later Byzantine style : the remains of the nave and of two side chap- 

 els. In the fore-court, situated to the east, the flame breaks out of a 

 fireplace-like opening about two feet broad and one foot high in the 

 serpentine rock. » It rises to a height of three or four feet, and (as a 

 naphtha spring ?) diffuses a pleasant odor, which is perceptible to a 

 distance of forty paces. Near this large flame, and without the chim- 

 ney-like opening, numerous very small, constantly ignited, lambent 



