A LARGE CRATER. 
341 
said, were a moderate size. If these contained say on an 
average three hundred people, then living in the crater there 
must be from fifteen to twenty thousand people. 
Airy, in his Popular Astronomy , tells a story of an early 
philosopher, who, when writing a paper for the Royal Society 
intending to prove the truth of the Copernican theory, com- 
menced for some reason or other with the assumption, ‘ Now we 
all know that hell is in the centre of the earth.’ If this assump- 
tion is true — and it emanated from a member of a very learned 
body — the twenty thousand people I have referred to are per- 
haps unwittingly living upon the lid of that establishment. 
The following account, which was given to me, of the last 
eruption of Asosan, might, in the mind of that early philo- 
sopher, have helped to strengthen his hypothesis : — ‘ During 
the winter of 1873 sounds were heard, and white and black 
smoke was observed proceeding from the top of Asosan. On 
the 27th February in the following year, whilst the wind was 
blowing from the south, the ground began to quake, and ashes 
were thown out. What the thickness of the beds of ashes 
in the rice-fields was we cannot tell, but near to us they ob- 
tained a thickness of one inch. The ashes covered everything, 
and the leaves of the pine-trees and the wheat were turned 
quite red. At six o’clock in the morning of the 13th the 
ground again began to shake, and noises were heard on an 
average a hundred times an hour. On the 14th, at six o’clock, 
there were two or three very heavy shakes, and on the 23rd 
these became still more violent. These shakings were so strong 
that neither old nor young could sleep. They continued on 
the 24th, but on this day the eruption ceased. The material 
which was thrown out was of a grey colour, but afterwards it 
became red. The greatest quantity of ashes fell at Kurogawa- 
gumi and Higashi-kurogawa. At the commencement of the 
eruption, which was on the 1st of December, 1873, the volcano 
threw out stones one and two feet in diameter ; and four men, 
who were working at some sulphur deposits on the top of the 
mountain, were immediately killed. Many hot springs burst 
out, and so much sulphurous matter was thrown into the river 
Shir oka wo, which flows from this crater to Kumanoto, that all 
the fish were poisoned. Even up till the 3rd of March, 1874, 
shocks were felt, and material was thrown out which covered 
the ground for a distance of eighteen miles. During the day 
it was at times as dark as night. Previously, in 1806, there 
had been another serious eruption. The fame of this mountain 
spread even to China, and in a Chinese book I found the fol- 
lowing : — 
‘ Smoke rises up to the sky from mount Aso in Nipon. 
People say that in this mountain there is a precious stone of 
NEW SERIES, YOL. IV. NO. XVI. A A 
