Ch.XIV.] AGE OF CATALONIAN VOLCANOS. 



191 



several subterranean caverns, about twelve in number, which 

 are called in the country ' bufadors/ from which a current of 

 cold air issues during summer ; but which in winter is said to 

 be scarcely perceptible. I visited one of these bufadors in the 

 beginning of August, 1830, when the heat of the season was 

 unusually intense, and found a cold wind blowing from it, 

 which may easily be explained, for as the external air when 

 rarefied by heat ascends, the cold air from the interior of the 

 mountain rushes in to supply its place. 



Age of the Catalonian volcanos uncertain. It now only 

 remains to offer some remarks on the probable age of these 

 Spanish volcanos. Attempts have been made to prove, that in 

 this country, as well as in Auvergne and the Eifel, the earliest 

 inhabitants were eye-witnesses to the volcanic action. In the 

 year 1421 it is said, when Clot was destroyed by an earth- 

 quake, an eruption broke out near Amer, and consumed the 

 town. The researches of Don Francisco Bolos have, I think, 

 shown, in the most satisfactory manner, that there is no good 

 historical foundation for the latter part of this story ; and any 

 geologist who has visited Amer must be convinced that there 

 never was any eruption on that spot. It is true that, in the 

 year above-mentioned, the whole of Olot, with the exception of 

 a single house, was cast down by an earthquake ; one of those 

 shocks which at distant intervals, during the last five centu- 

 ries, have shaken the Pyrenees, and particularly the country 

 between Perpignan and Olot, where the movements, at the 

 period alluded to, were most violent. 



Some houses are said to have sunk into the earth ; and this 

 account has been corroborated by the fact that, within the 

 memory of persons now living, the buried arches of a Bene- 

 dictine monastery were found at a depth of six feet beneath the 

 surface; and still later, some houses were dug out in the street 

 called Aigua. Don Bolos informed me, that he was present 

 when the latter excavation was made, and when the roof of a 

 buried house, nearly entire, was found six feet beneath the sur- 

 face, the interior being in a great part empty, so that it was 



