THERMAL WATERS OF ASIA MINOR. 105 



The quantity of water brought away was too small to ex- 

 amine for the presence of bromine. 



This is the last of the thermal waters of Asia Minor which 

 have been examined; there are a few others that may yet 

 reach me, when the composition will be made known as soon 

 as examined. 



CAUSE OF THE THERMAL WATERS IN WESTERN ASIA MINOR. 



The cause of the abundance of warm springs in this quarter 

 of the globe (in all formations from the alluvial to the oldest 

 rocks) is doubtless owing to the extensive igneous action within 

 no great depth beneath the surface of the country; a fact 

 evinced by the frequency of earthquakes, but more especially 

 by their extent ; for they almost invariably extend from one 

 end of it to the other, as well as to the neighboring islands. 



Neither time nor change of government has contributed so 

 much to the destruction of the hundreds of magnificent cities 

 which once covered this country as the desolating influence of 

 the earthquake, and many are the cities that now exist which 

 have been prostrated over and over again and rebuilt, each 

 time in diminished splendor, until at last they are little better 

 than collections of huts when contrasted with their original 

 condition. All the country at the present day seems to be as 

 much subject to them as formerly. 



The only part of Western Asia Minor where phenomena are 

 seen strictly analogous to those of active volcanoes is in the 

 Catacecaumene, or burnt district, situated in Lydia, about one 

 hundred miles east of Smyrna. Numbers of volcanic cones 

 exist in the neighborhood of Koola, the craters of many of 

 which are quite distinct, especially the one called Kaplar Alan, 

 which has a perfect crater about half a mile in circumference, 

 and two or three hundred feet deep. The extent of this re- 

 gion is some twenty miles long by eight broad. We have no 

 record of any activity in these volcanoes, and Strabo described 

 them in his day quite as they are now, and the Turks give to 

 Satan the full credit of having created such a black, parched-up 

 district. My object at the present time is merely to mention 

 this district, as a full description of it enters into a paper on 

 the earthquakes and volcanoes of Asia Minor, that I propose 

 publishing at some future time; it is brought forward now 



