CHAPTER VI.
PARLEY DESCRIBES VOLCANOES, EARTHQUAKES, AND HOT SPRINGS.
You have no doubt often heard of Volcanoes and Earthquakes, for almost everybody in all ages has felt a deep interest in them, and a curiosity to know what they are caused by. If you will listen to me, while I merely describe them as they really exist, without "drawing the long bow," as people say, I will then tell you how I think they are produced.
It is quite certain that there is an important connexion between Volcanoes and Earthquakes; and we may safely take this for granted, and at once call the cause of both, whatever it may be, volcanic agency.
It has been discovered by extensive observations, that this agency does not exert itself in individual spots, so as to produce here a Volcano and there an Earthquake; but its operations take place over long tracts of country in which the Volcanoes are placed, and, in the spaces between them, Earthquakes are more or less frequent.
These tracts are called Volcanic bands; one of them extends nearly parallel with the West Coast of South America, along the chain of mountains called the Andes, which you will see marked on the map; and another much smaller extends from Mount Vesuvius to Mount Etna, with the Volcanic Island Stromboli, and several extinct Volcanoes lying between them, and then turns to the East, through several of the Greek Islands, and passes on to Syria, where Earthquakes are frequent.
Earthquakes in their simplest form are nothing more than violent shakings of the ground; but sometimes the earth is split open; sometimes it is raised; and sometimes it is depressed.
I shall tell you of some of the changes which took place in the great Earthquake of Calabria, which lies in the smaller volcanic band I mentioned to you between Vesuvius and Etna.