Gone with the refluent wave into the deep—
A prince with half his people!
You will find a great many other astonishing effects of this Earthquake described in Mr. Lyell's Work on Geology, from which I have extracted some parts of the preceding account.
VOLCANOES.
The word Volcano comes from Vulcan, the name of the God of fire in the Greek mythology. You have read how the poets used to represent him as engaged underground in forging thunderbolts for Jupiter, and other work of the same kind, with the assistance of his one-eyed journeymen the Cyclopes. They feigned that Volcanoes were the chimneys of his workshops, and that when an eruption took place he was busy forging his iron.
Others pretended that when Jupiter had overcome the giants named Titans, who had rebelled against him, instead of putting them in the stocks, he placed mountains upon them, and that when the imprisoned monsters turned themselves from one side to the other, earthquakes and eruptions were the consequence.
However, we don't believe any of these stories now, neither perhaps did the ancients. But you must learn all about them and their meaning, (where they have any,) from your schoolmaster. My business now is to tell you what Volcanoes are.
They are openings in the surface of the earth, from whence ignited matter of various kinds, smoke, and ashes, are sent forth by some subterranean agency.
For the most part they do not always keep in activity, but have long intervals of rest for months, and sometimes for very many years, between the eruptions.