124 NATl ELAL BIST0B1 OP 



marked by volcanic perturbations, passing, from time to time, 

 through Western Asia to Africa, and sometimes extending con- 

 vulsively to Western Europe and even to the Azores. 



EUBOPR 



EUROPE, ill many respects, is only the western prolongation 

 of Asia, where features of the great central chain of mountains 

 similarly, break into ramified systems, turned to the Atlantic; 

 while, on the east, they end or border the Pacific. On each 

 coast there are mighty islands, containing the most energetic 

 populations; and on each continent are the two forms or races 

 of mankind, which alone have advanced in mental develop- 

 ment, without any common point of departure hitherto philo- 

 sophically substantiated. Both quarters have volcanic spiracula 

 in the seas beyond them, and on the shores, though not in the 

 same degrees of activity ; for while the craters of many on the 

 main land of Kamtschatka, in the Japanese islands, and on 

 multiplied points in the Chinese and neighboring seas, are 

 incessantly incandescent, those of Europe, with exception of 

 the Italian, are dormant or extinct; and though the Azorean 

 cluster turmoils on a smaller scale, Hecla, in the high north, 

 alone has produced devastations, within the period of historical 

 cognizance, sufficient to affect profoundly the permanent inter- 

 ests of a resident population. At the bifurcations of the 

 European continuation of the great mountain chains of central 

 Asia, are dislocations of great extent, among which that formed 

 by the great basin of the Euxine, or antique Axenus, is the 

 most remarkable. Its present outlet at the Bosphorus, dating, 

 probably, not much anterior to the- Greek heroic age, was 

 clearly a consequence of increased pressure, produced by the 

 waters of the inland seas, already noticed, increasing their 

 weight towards the south, in proportion as the north was hove 

 up ; and both the Ouralian and Sarmatian arms were cut off 

 from their :ommunications with the ocean, but were not to be 



