most terrific volcano on the face of the earth. Sir katé at the time of the eruption, of whom five or Stamford Raffles has thus described one of its six survive. The trees and herbage of every

eruptions:

Almost every one, says this writer, is acquainted with the intermitting convulsions of Etna and Vesuvius, as they appear in the descriptions of the poet and the authentic accounts of the naturalist, but the most extraordinary of them can bear no comparison, in point of duration and force with that of Mount Tomboro, in the island of Sumbaya. This eruption extended perceptible evidences of its existence over the whole of the Molucca Islands, over Java, a considerable portion of Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo, to a circumference of a thousand statute miles from its centre, by tremulous motions and the report of explosions; while within the range of its more immediate activity, embracing a space of 300 miles around it, it produced the most astonishing effects, and excited the most alarming apprehensions. In Java, at the distance of 300 miles, it seemed to be awfully present. The sky was overcast at midday with clouds of ashes; the sun was enveloped in an atmosphere, whose “palpable density" he was unable to penetrate; a shower of ashes covered the houses, the streets, and the fields, to the depth of several inches, and amid this darkness explosions were heard at intervals, like the report of artillery, or the

noise of distant thunder.

description, along the whole of the north and west of the peninsula, have been completely destroyed, with the exception of a high point of land near the spot where the village of Tomboro stood. At Sang'ir, it is added, the famine occasioned by this event was so extreme, that one of the rajah's own daughters died of starvation.-Pp. 402–404.

In the island of Java the following extraordinary and awful event is recorded:

The Papandayang, situated on the south-western part of the island, was formerly one of its largest volcanoes, but the greater part of the mountain was swallowed up into the earth in the year 1772, after a short but violent paroxysm. The account which has been transmitted of this event asserts, that near midnight, between the 11th and 12th of August, there was observed about the mountain an uncommonly luminous cloud, by which it appeared to be completely enveloped. The inhabitants, as well about the foot as on the declivities of the mountain, alarmed by the appearance, betook themselves to flight; but before they could all save themselves, the whole mass began to give way, and the greatest part of it actually fell in and disappeared in the earth. At the same time a tremendous noise was heard, resembling the discharge of the heaviest cannon. Immense quantities of volcanic substances, which were thrown out at the same time, and spread in every direction, propagated the effects of the explosion through the space of many miles.

At Sumbaya itself three distinct columns of flame appeared to burst forth, near the top of the Tomboro mountain, (all of them apparently within the verge of the crater,) and after ascending apparently It is estimated that an extent of ground, belonging to a very great height, their tops united in the air in a troubled, confused manner. In a short time to the mountain itself and its immediate environs. the whole mountain next Sang'ir, appeared like a fifteen miles long and six broad, was by this combody of liquid fire, extending itself in every direc-motion swallowed up in the bowels of the earth.

tion.

407.

Several persons, sent to examine the condition of The fire and columns of flame continued to rage the neighborhood, made report, that they found it with unabated fury, until the darkness, caused by impossible to approach the spot, on account of the the quantity of falling matter, obscured it at about heat of the substances which encircled it, and which eight, P. M. Stones at this time fell very thick at were piled on each other to the height of three feet, Sang'ir, some of them as large as two fists, but although this was on the 24th of September, and generally not larger than walnuts. Between nine thus full six weeks after the catastrophe. It is also and ten, P. M., ashes began to fall, and soon after mentioned that forty villages, partly swallowed up a violent whirlwind ensued, which blew down by the ground, and partly covered by the substances nearly every house in the village of Sang'ir, car-thrown out, were destroyed on this occasion, and rying the alaps or roofs, and light parts away with that 2,957 of the inhabitants perished.-Pp. 406, it. In the port of Sang'ir, adjoining Sumbaya, its effects were much more violent, tearing up by the The same island also affords two other extraorroots the largest trees, and carrying them into the dinary effects of volcanic action. One is the vomitair, together with men, horses, cattle, and whatever else came within its influence. [This will accounting of mud. for the immense number of floating trees seen at About the centre of this limestone district is found sea.] The sea rose twelve feet higher than it had an extraordinary volcanic phenomenon. On apever been known to do before, and completely proaching the spot from a distance, it is first disspoiled the only small spots of rice land in Sang'ir, covered by a large volume of smoke rising and dissweeping away houses and everything within its appearing at intervals of a few seconds, resembling reach. The whirlwind lasted about an hour. No the vapors arising from a violent surf, whilst a dull explosions were heard till the whirlwind had ceased, noise is heard like that of distant thunder. Having at about eleven, A. M. From midnight till the advanced so near that the vision was no longer imevening of the 11th, they continued without inter- peded by the smoke, a large hemispherical mass mission; after that time their violence moderated, was observed, consisting of black earth mixed with and they were heard only at intervals, but the ex-water, about sixteen feet in diameter, rising to the plosions did not cease entirely till the 15th of July. Of all the villages round Tomboro, Tempo, containing forty inhabitants, is the only one remaining. In Pekaté no vestige of a house is left; twenty-six of the people, who were at Sumbaya at the time, are the whole of the population who have escaped. From the best inquiries there were certainly not fewer than 12,000 individuals in Tomboro and Pe-]

height of twenty or thirty feet in a perfectly regular manner, and, as it were, pushed up by a force beneath, which suddenly exploded with a dull noise, and scattered about a volume of black mud in every direction. After an interval of two or three, or sometimes four or five, seconds, the hemispherical body of mud or earth rose and exploded again.P. 409.

The other in the Valley of Death, or Poison building up to the point at which they were no longer Valley. covered by the waves and spray.

Amongst the remarkable phenomena connected with volcanic agency which Java affords, is that same abundant evolution of carbonic acid, which has been already described as occurring in the Lago di Ansanto, near Naples. A similar valley in Java has been called the Valley of Death, or Poison Valley, (Guevo Upas,) and by combining the accounts given of it with those respecting the malignant qualities of a particular vegetable production of the island, called the Upas tree, (Antiaris Toxicaria,) that monstrous fable has been concocted, to which Darwin has given currency in those wellknown lines of his "Botanic Garden," beginning,

Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath
Fell Upas sits, the hydra-tree of death.

If, therefore, this subsidence be supposed to have continued, a provision would exist for the continuation also of this building process, for the land sinking still further, the corals might go on adding to the bulk of the reef, without ever attaining the level of the water; and in this manner, during a vast succession of ages, a thickness of coralline matter would be produced, equivalent to the amount of depression which the rock upon which it reposed had in the mean time undergone.

The more vigorous growth of the corals on the outer margin, from having space to expand, and from being freely exposed to the open sea, will account for the annular form which the reef usually assumes, with a hollow within filled with sea-i water; and this not only where there is a central island, as in the case of a barrier reef, but also where there is none, as in that of the Atoll or lagoon island.

Every living thing that enters this fatal valley is arrested there by instant death, and as the same fate awaits any one that may go to the rescue, the ground The absence of this internal hollow between the is covered with the bleached bones of numerous ani- land and the growing mass of coral serves to show, mals, as well as of men, who have from time to time that in the third kind, the fringing reef, there has approached the precincts. Here the bones remain, been no subsidence; for, had there been any, the prowhilst the soft parts have wasted away, as carbonicgressive rise of the coral on the margin, in a acid exerts little action upon the earthly constituents; greater ratio than that within, would have by debut in another locality, at Talaga-Bodas, a volcano grees produced a corresponding hollow.-P. 419. mentioned by Boon Mesch, on the authority of Reinwardt, where the mephitic vapors are apparently accompanied by sulphuric acid, the bony matter of the animals suffocated by the mephitic exhalations is eaten away, whilst the muscles, nails, hair, and skin, remain. The fact at least is vouched for by the Dutch naturalist; the explanation I offer as my own.-Pp. 410, 411.

In the Pacific Ocean nature may appear at first sight under a milder sway, and may seem to be

secure from the effects of internal fire. Those islands scattered over its waters, which rest on their foundation of coral, are often the most perfect pictures of safe retirement and happy repose which the world can afford. The Atolls, or lagoon islands, are circles of land, more or less broken, enclosing a portion of the sea, kept in perpetual quiet by the wall around it. There are often islands within this calm retreat, which, consequently, have never felt the roughness of the waves, though in the midst of the greatest ocean of the world. When this last is the case, they are called barrier reefs, as distinguished from lagoon islands. Quiet, however, as these islands may appear, they owe their very existence to volcanic forces. There are different theories of accounting for the forms in which the coral insects have built these monuments of indefatigable industry, but all agree in supposing that there have been changes in the bottom of the ocean produced by volcanic action. Mr. Darwin's theory of subsidence is considered the most probable.

He supposes that, at some antecedent period, a large tract of that which now constitutes a part of the Pacific Ocean was dry land; but that it has for many centuries past been slowly subsiding, until at length the upper surface of the rock sunk beneath the level of the waters.

Whenever this event occurred, the coral animals would commence their labors, and would go on

More direct volcanic action is not wanting in the Pacific, but the situation of it would rather confirm than interfere with the theory of subsidence.

From this statement it appears that volcanic action is still rife in various parts of the Pacific Ocean, included within north latitude 15° and 30°, and in south latitude below the parallel of 16°; but that there is an intermediate tract, on either side of the equator, over which a number of low coral islands are scattered, entirely exempt from all indishores of the American continent, where the Galcations of the kind, at least until we approach the apagos group make their appearance. These latter, however, as well as the islands of Revillagigedo and Juan Fernandez, are so remote, that they will be considered as belonging to another system, and hence we can more easily admit the view for which Mr. Darwin contends that the tract alluded to is the seat of a vast subsidence, the rate of which may be supposed to keep pace in the main with the rate of growth which the coraline formations are experiencing.

This tract is in general avoided by navigators, from the dangers arising from the numerous coral islands above it. From these rocks the latitudes to reefs which exist under water, as well as forming the north and south are in great measure exempt, showing that the formation of coral is in a degree coincident with the area of subsidence.-Pp. 427, 428.

The lowest point ever reached by man in the southern hemisphere presents a most wonderful example of volcanic fire. Sir James Ross in 1841 discovered a vast continent, now called Victoria Land, in about the same longitude as New Zealand, and 771° south latitude.

Here two volcanoes are observed, the one extinct, called Mount Terror, the other in a state of great activity, called Mount Erebus.

The latter was estimated at no less than 12,600 feet above the level of the sea, and makes part of a

stupendous chain of mountains, belonging to a new continent of vast but undefined extent, the whole mass of which, from its highest point to the ocean's edge, is covered with everlasting snow and ice.

This icy barrier, running east and west on this parallel, forbids any further progress towards the pole, or any nearer examination of the igneous phenomena there displayed.—Pp. 431, 432.

A beautiful description of this scene is given by Dr. John Hooker, in a letter published in the Journal of Botany, and which forms a note in our present work.

The water and the sky were both as blue, or rather more intensely blue, than I have ever seen them in the tropics, and all the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beautiful peaks of snow, which, when the sun approached the horizon, reflected the most brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarlet; and then to see the dark cloud of smoke, tinged with flame, rising from the volcano in a perfect unbroken column, one side jet black, the other giving back the colors of the sun, sometimes turning off at a right angle by some current of wind, and stretching many miles to leeward! This was a sight so surpassing everything that can be imagined, and so heightened by the consciousness that we had penetrated, under the guidance of our commander, into regions far beyond what was ever deemed practicable, that it caused a feeling of awe to steal over us, at the consideration of our own comparative insignificance and helplessness, and at the same time an indescribable feeling of the greatness of the Creator in the works of his hand.-P. 432.

shape of a bladder. The bounds of this convulsion are still distinguishable from the fractured strata.

Those who witnessed this great catastrophe from the top of Aguasarco assert, that the flames were seen to issue forth for an extent of more than half a square league, that fragments of burning rocks were thrown to prodigious heights, and that through a thick cloud of ashes, illumined by volcanic fire, the softened surface of the earth was seen to swell up like an agitated sea. The rivers of Cuitimba and San Pedro precipitated themselves into the burning chasms. The decomposition of the water contributed to invigorate the flames, which were distinguishable at the city of Pascnaro, though situated on a very extensive table-land 4592 feet above the plaing of Las Playas de Jorullo. Eruptions of mud, and especially of strata of clay, enveloping balls of decomposed basalt in concentrical layers, appear to indicate that subterraneous water had no small share in producing this extraordinary revolution. Thousands of small cones, from six to ten feet in height, called by the natives ovens, (Hornitos,) issued forth from the Malpays. Although, according to the testimony of the Indians, the heat of these volcanic ovens has suffered a great diminution during the last fifteen years, I have seen the thermometer rise to 212° on being plunged into fissures which exhale an aqueous vapor. Each small cone is a fumarole, from which a thick vapor ascends to the height of from twenty-two to thirty-two feet. In many of them a subterraneous noise is heard, which appears to announce the proximity of a fluid in ebullition.

In the midst of the ovens six large masses, elevated from 300 to 1600 feet each above the old level of the plains, sprung up from a chasm, of which the direction is from NN.E. to SS. W. This is the phenomenon of the Monte Nuovo of Naples, several times repeated in a range of volcanic hills. The most elevated of these enormous masses, which remind us of the Puys in Auvergne, is the great has thrown up from its north side an immense volcano of Jorullo. It is continually burning, and fragments of primitive rocks. These great erupquantity of scorified and basaltic lavas, containing tions of the central volcano continued till the month of February, 1760. In the following years they be

We have no space for the description of many other volcanic districts scattered over the world. We, therefore, altogether omit the islands of the Atlantic and the continent of Africa, which contain some few examples, without, however, any particular interest. America has a great line of volcanoes, more or less developed, in the vast chain of mountains that, under different names, runs from north to south of both continents; otherwise there are not many examples, for great flat-came gradually less frequent. ness is the prevailing characteristic of the rest of America.

We cannot, however, omit the description of

Mount Jorullo.

The volcano of Jorullo, situated between Colima and the town of Mexico, is of much more modern date than the rest, and the great catastrophe which attended its first appearance is, perhaps, (says Humboldt,) one of the most extraordinary physical revolutions in the annals of the history of our planet.

In the month of June, 1759, a subterraneous noise was heard. Hollow sounds of the most alarming nature were heard, accompanied by frequent earthquakes, which succeeded each other for from fifty to sixty days, to the great consternation of the inhabitants of the farm. From the beginning of September everything seemed to announce the complete reëstablishment of tranquillity, when in the night of the 28th and 29th the horrible subterraneous noise recommenced. The affrighted Indians fled to the mountains of Aguasarco. A tract of ground from three to four square miles in extent rose up in the

The Indians, frightened at the horrible noises of the new volcano, abandoned at first all the villages situated within seven or eight leagues distance of the Playas de Jorullo. They became gradually, however, accustomed to this terrific spectacle; and having returned to their cottages, they advanced towards the mountains of Aguasarco and Santa Ines, to admire the streams of fire discharged from an infinity of small volcanic apertures of various sizes. The roofs of the houses at Queretaro, at a distance of more than forty-eight leagues in a straight line from the scene of the explosion, were at that time covered with ashes.-Pp. 476-480.

We now conclude this part of our subject with the following general notice of the volcanoes of

South America :

The volcanoes we are now about to consider are

distinguished from those that most commonly meet the eye in Europe, not only by their gigantic proportions, but also by their general conformation and their mineralogical characters.

We have, indeed, described, as existing in Mexico and Guatemala, volcanoes nearly rivalling them

in point of elevation, and equally distinguished by their pyramidal forms, as well as by being made up of one uniform description of rock, and not of alternating beds of lava and scoriæ; but these characters are to be met with occasionally amongst the volcanoes of the old world also, and are not stated to be accompanied, in the case of the Mexican volcanoes, with any peculiar mineralogical composition.

In the Andes, on the other hand, we observe a long range of conical mountains, forming some of the highest eminences on the face of the globe, often destitute of craters, rarely pouring forth any streams of lava, but emitting from their summits only steam and aeriform fluids, whilst the material of which they are composed is that peculiar description of felspathic rock, which Henry Rose has distinguished, from the circumstance of its occurring in South America, by the name of andisite.

interfering one with the other, so that during its continuance the surface of the land is tossed about somewhat in the same manner as that of the sca is during the prevalence of a storm, when a number of billows travelling in different directions strike one against the other, and thus produce every possible complexity of movement.-Pp. 508, 509.

Earthquakes of the two latter kinds are the most destructive.

Now this second kind of movement has been

noticed with greater or less distinctness by many of those who have observed and reported to us the frightful earthquakes which, on the 1st of November, 1755, brought about the destruction of Lisbon. Of the not less terrific, though less widely diffused earthquake, which in February and March, 1783, No wonder that Humboldt, the great and princi- tained authentic accounts. Dolomieu, who made laid waste Calabria and Messina, we have also obpal explorer of these extensive regions, should observations on it at the very time and place where have felt himself privileged to protest against theo-it occurred, states distinctly, that the movements ries founded only upon an observation of the puny volcanoes of Italy, and with a pardonable feeling of exultation at the wider field of induction which his own superior opportunities of foreign travel had afforded him, should have compared the geologist who imagined all the eruptive rocks throughout the globe to be moulded according to the model of those he was familiar with in Europe, to the shepherd in Virgil, who supposed, in the simplicity of his heart, his own little hamlet to contain within itself the image of imperial Rome.-Pp. 485, 486.

We leave now the region of phenomena immediately arising from volcanoes, and proceed to the consideration of others supposed to be connected with them, such as earthquakes and thermal springs.

That earthquakes are but volcanoes without any vent, there can hardly be a doubt. In dealing, therefore, with the theory of volcanic action, we need scarcely make any distinction between these two exhibitions of the same internal force. We must, however, lay before our readers .a few extracts descriptive of the effects of these fearful convulsions of nature. As the accidental bursting of a powder magazine is more dreadful than the firing of the heaviest artillery, inasmuch as the one spreads all round, and the other but in one direction, so have earthquakes ever inspired more terror, and been more destructive of human life than volcanoes. The nature of the earthquake shock is that of waves propagated from a central cause. These are of different kinds.

In Southern Italy, where this is too often the case, the movements of the earth referred to earthquakes, having been carefully observed, are divided into three kinds.

1st. The undulatory motion, which takes the place horizontally and heaves the ground successively upwards and downwards, proceeding onwards in a uniform direction.

2d. The successive motion, in which the ground is heaved up in a direction more or less approaching to the perpendicular, as happens in the explosion of a mine.

3d. The vorticose motion, which seems to be a combination of the two preceding ones, several undulations taking place contemporaneously, and thus

CCXLIV. LIVING AGE.

VOL. XX.

8

of the principal shock on the 5th of February were always of a wave-like character, and could be compared to nothing better than to the effect produced, when we place small quantities of moist and slightly moistened sand near each other on a plate which we toss vertically upwards, moving it horizontally at the same time backwards and forwards.

On the 28th of March of that year, a fine example of a movement of succession was perceived; for, according to Hamilton's account, the summits of the granitic hills in Calabria were clearly seen to rise and fall alternately, and individuals, and even houses standing by themselves, are said to have been suddenly borne aloft, and then, without any damage being done to them, brought back to a somewhat higher spot than before.-Pp. 509, 510. Again :

The most frightful, however, of these catastrophes was the earthquake which, in June, 1692, At Port Royal the ravaged the whole of Jamaica. entire surface of the ground seemed at the time like a rolling, swelling sea; houses were shifted from their places; men who, at the commencement of the phenomena, had escaped into the streets and open spaces of the town, were thrown down, tossed to and fro, and often bruised and stunned in the most frightful manner; others again thrown aloft and borne to a great distance; so that some, by good fortune, were carried out into the harbor, and, falling into the water, escaped with their lives.-P.

511.

The following notice of the earthquake of Lisbon seems to prove that its cause was very deepseated.

This earthquake affords the best example on record of the extent of ground over which some of these great natural convulsions diffuse themselves. It has been computed, that the above-named shock pervaded an area of 700,000 geographical miles, or the twelfth part of the circumference of the globe, comprising all the Spanish peninsula-being felt at Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malaga, Madrid-and extending to the Pyrenees and to Provence. Shocks sufficient to damage houses were experienced at the same time in many parts of the Alps; slighter ones at Geneva and Neufchatel; but at Como, Turin, and Milan, taking place with considerable force. Vesuvius, which had shown signs of commotion pre

viously, became tranquil on the day of the earth- it is not at all perceived at places much nearer its quake.