204 The National Geographic Magazine 



do as much damage to a city as would 

 the most violent earthquake. When 

 this great wind had become charged 

 with the dust of Krakatoa, then, for the 

 first and, I may add, for the only time, 



it stood revealed to human vision. 

 Then it was seen that this wind circled 

 round the earth in the vicinity of the 

 equator and completed its circuit in. 

 about thirteen days. 



VOLCANOES 



EONS ago the earth on which we 

 live was a huge mass of ' ' fire 

 mist." Astronomers tell us that 

 today in the heavens we can see vast 

 nebula, suggesting what the earth was 

 once. Gradually the surface of the 

 "fire mist" cooled and hardened, but 

 the interior is still intensely hot. 

 Whether it is solid, liquid, or viscous 

 we do not know. This heat, raging 

 miles below the surface, at times escapes 

 through the hard crust by vents or vol- 

 canoes. 



There are from 300 to 360 volcanoes 

 on the globe. This estimate includes 

 merely live volcanoes and volcanoes 

 which within recent times have been in 

 action. If we should count the many 

 mountains scattered over the earth 

 which show today signs of volcanic ac- 

 tion in more remote past the estimate 

 would have to be increased by many 

 hundreds. 



Volcanoes would seem to be arranged 

 with more or less symmetry in belts cir- 

 cling the great oceans. A ring of fire 

 surrounds the Pacific. Starting at the 

 South Shetland Islands, several hundred 

 miles south of Cape Horn, a belt of vol- 

 canoes extends up the west coast of 

 South America, Central America, and 

 North America ; from Alaska it crosses 

 the Pacific along the Aleutian Islands to 

 Kamchatka ; thence it follows the east 

 edge of the Pacific through the Kurile 

 Islands, Japan, Formosa, the Philip- 

 pines, the Moluccas, the Solomon Isl- 

 ands, the North Hebrides, New Zea- 

 land, and finally ends in Mounts Terror 

 and Erebus, on the Antarctic Continent. 



The volcanoes forming this great belt 

 are in places ranged in chains, as along 

 the west coast of Central America and 

 in the Aleutian Islands; elsewhere they 

 are separated by long distances, but 

 nevertheless they would seem to have 

 some connection with each other. Some- 

 times the line of volcanoes surrounding 

 the Pacific is very narrow, as in Central 

 America, and then again it broadens 

 hundreds of miles, as in the western 

 United States, where extinct volcanoes 

 on the east edge of the belt are hundreds 

 of miles from the ocean and distant from 

 each other. 



Within this great Pacific circle of vol- 

 canoes, twenty-five thousand miles in 

 length, are many volcanic islands : the 

 Ladrones, the Hawaiian Islands, with 

 the famous Mauna Eoa ; the Galapagos, 

 the Samoan Islands, as well as the Tonga 

 and Fiji Archipelagoes, and many 

 smaller groups. The coral islands may 

 be also classed as volcanic, as they rest 

 in great part on volcanic foundations. 



Eastward from the circle around the 

 Pacific, a branch belt extends through 

 Sumatra and Java. On the broken 

 isthmus which ages ago joined Asia and 

 Australia are over one hundred vol- 

 canoes, manj' of which are constantly, 

 belching forth mud, lava, or ashes. This 

 is the great focus of volcanic action of 

 the earth. 



Round nearty three sides of the 

 Atlantic basin volcanic districts are 

 scattered with some apparent symme- 

 try. In the far north Hekla and nearly 

 one score others separate the Atlantic 

 from the Arctic Ocean. Stretching 



