VOLCANIC LIGHT. 
237 
We reposed at the foot of the cavern whence those 
flames were seen to issue, which of late years have 
become more frequent. Our guides and the farmer, an 
intelligent man, equally acquainted with the localities of 
the province, discussed, in the manner of the Creoles, the 
dangers to which the town of Cumanacoa would be exposed 
if the Cuchivano became an active volcano, or, as they 
expressed it, “se veniesse a reventar.” It appeared to 
them evident, that since the great earthquakes of Quito 
and Cumana in 1797, New Andalusia was every day more 
and more undermined by subterranean fires. They cited 
the flames which had been seen to issue from the earth at 
Cumana; and the shocks felt in places where heretofore 
the ground had never been shaken. They recollected that 
at Macarapan, sulphurous emanations had been frequently 
perceived for some months past. We were struck with 
these facts, upon which were founded predictions that have 
since been almost all realized. Enormous convulsions of 
the earth took place at Caracas in 1812, aud proved how 
tumultuously nature is agitated in the north-east part of 
Terra-Eirma. 
But what ia the cause of the luminous phenomena which 
are observed in the Cuchivano? The column of air which 
rises from the mouth of a burning volcano* is sometimes 
observed to shine with a splendid light. This light, which 
is believed to he owing to the hydrogen gas, was observed 
from Chillo, on the summit of the Cotopaxi, at a time when 
the mountain seemed in the greatest repose. According to 
the statements of the ancients, the Mons Albanus, near 
Home, known at present under the name of Monte Cavo, 
appeared at times on fire during the night; hut the Mons 
Albanus is a volcano recently extinguished, which, in the 
time of Cato, threw out rapilli ;t while the Cuchivano is a 
calcareous mountain, remote from any trap formation. 
* Wfi must not confound this very rare phenomenon with the glimmer- 
ing commonly observed a few toises above the brink of a crater, and 
which (as I remarked at Mount Vesuvius in 1805) is only the reflection 
of great masses of inflamed scoria, thrown up without sufficient force to 
pass the mouth of the volcano. 
f “ Albano monte bitluum continenter lapidibus pluit.” — Livy, lib. 
ixv. cap. 7. (Heyne, Opuscuia Acad., tom. iii. p. 261.) 
