Henry Woodward — On Volcano^. 349 



previously heard were not those of artillery. These ashes could 

 only have been carried by the upper current, as Jamaica lies North- 

 east from the mountain. The same eruption gives also beautiful 

 proof that the ascending air current divides itself above, for ashes 

 fell upon the ship Convfay, in the Pacific, at a distance of 700 miles 

 South-west of Coseguina. 



" The roaring of Coseguina was heard at San Salvador, a distance 

 of 1,000 miles. Union, a seaport on the West coast of Conchagua, 

 was in absolute darkness for 43 hours ; as light began to dawn it 

 was observed that the sea- shore had advanced 800 feet upon the 

 ocean, through the mass of ashes which had fallen. 



" The eruption of Mome Garou forms the last link of a vast chain 

 of volcanic actions accompanied by earthquake shocks. In June and 

 July, 1811, near San Miguel, one of the Azores, the island Sabrina 

 rose, accompanied by smoke and flame, from the bottom of the sea, 150 

 feet deep, and attained a height of 300 feet and a circumference of a 

 mile. The small Antilles were afterwards shaken, and subsequently 

 the valleys of the Mississippi, Arkansas, and Ohio, but the elastic 

 forces found no vent ; they sought one, then, on the North coast of 

 Columbia. March 26th began as a day of extraordinary heat in 

 Caraccas ; the air was clear and the firmament cloudless. It was 

 Green Thursday, and a regiment of troops of the line stood under 

 arms in the barracks of the quarter of San Carlos, ready to join 

 in the procession. The people streamed to the churches. A loud 

 subterranean thunder was heard, and immediately afterwards followed 

 an earthquake shock, so violent, that the church of Alta Gracia, 

 150 feet high, borne by pillars 15 feet thick, formed a heap of 

 crushed rubbish not more than 6 feet high. In the evening the 

 almost full moon looked down with mild lustre upon the ruins of 

 the town, under which lay the crushed bodies of upwards of 10,000 

 of its inhabitants. But even here there was no exit granted to the 

 elastic forces underneath. Finally, on April 27th, they succeeded 

 in opening once more the crater of Mome Garou, which had been 

 closed for a century, and the earth, for a distance equal to that from 

 Vesuvius to Paris, rang with the thunder-shout of the liberated 

 prisoner." 



The eruption of Vesuvius in 1794 was the most formidable known 

 in the history of this truly classical crater.^ 



On the evening of June 15th violent earthquake shocks were felt, 

 and a sudden outburst of lava in the Pedimentina, among; the re- 

 mains of the earlier currents, occurred at two p.m. A fissure 2,375 

 feet long was produced, from which the lava issued for the space of 

 237 feet in breadth, throwing up four crateriform cones, each of 

 which ejected red-hot stones in quick succession, so as to appear like 

 one continuous outburst. The showers contained really fluid lava 

 (similar to the lava fountains seen in the Hawaian Islands). 



1 A most valuable and interesting account of Vesuvius was read before the 

 Geologists' Association, by the now Honorary Secretary, J. Logan Lobley, Esq., F.G.S., 

 in 1868, giving not only its history, but a description of a personal visit paid during 

 the last eruption. This has since been published in a separate form, by E. Stanford, 

 Charing Cross, with illustrations, and a list of all the minerals both of Somma and 

 Vesuvius. 



