The line is continued in the southern extremity of the Peninsula of Kamtschatka, where there are many active volcanoes, which, in some eruptions, have scattered ashes to immense distances. The largest and most active of these is Klutschew, lat. 56° 3' N., which rises at once from the sea to the prodigious height of 15,000 feet. Within 700 feet of the summit, Erman saw, in 1829, a current of lava, emitting a vivid light, flow down the northwest side to the foot of the cone. A flow of lava from the summit of Mont Blanc to its base in the valley of Chamouni would afford but an inadequate idea of the declivity down which this current descended. Large quantities of ice and snow opposed for a time a barrier to the lava, until at length the fiery torrent overcame, by its heat and pressure, this obstacle, and poured down the mountain side with a frightful noise, which was heard for a distance of more than fifty miles.[479]
The Kurile chain of islands constitutes the prolongation of the Kamtschatka range, where a train of volcanic mountains, nine of which are known to have been in eruption, trends in a southerly direction. The line is then continued to the southwest in the great island of Jesso, and again in Nipon, the principal of the Japanese group. It then extends by Loo Choo and Formosa to the Philippine Islands, and thence by Sangir and the northeastern extremity of Celebes to the Moluccas (see map, [fig. 39]). Afterwards it passes westward through Sumbawa to Java.
There are said to be thirty-eight considerable volcanoes in Java, some of which are more than 10,000 feet high. They are remarkable for the quantity of sulphur and sulphureous vapors which they discharge. They rarely emit lava, but rivers of mud issue from them, like the moya of the Andes of Quito. The memorable eruption of Galongoon, in 1822, will be described in the twenty-fifth chapter. The crater of Taschem, at the eastern extremity of Java, contains a lake strongly impregnated with sulphuric acid, a quarter of a mile long, from which a river of acid water issues, which supports no living creature, nor can fish live in the sea near its confluence. There is an extinct crater near Batur, called Guevo Upas, or the Valley of Poison, about half a mile in circumference, which is justly an object of terror to the inhabitants of the country. Every living being which penetrates into this valley falls down dead, and the soil is covered with the carcasses of tigers, deer, birds, and even the bones of men; all killed by the abundant emanations of carbonic acid gas, by which the bottom of the valley is filled.
In another crater in this land of wonders, near the volcano of Talaga Bodas, we learn from M. Reinwardt, that the sulphureous exhalations have killed tigers, birds, and innumerable insects; and the soft parts of these animals, such as as the fibres, muscles, nails, hair, and skin, are very well preserved, while the bones are corroded, and entirely destroyed.
We learn from observations made in 1844, by Mr. Jukes, that a recent tertiary formation composed of limestone and resembling the coral rock of a fringing reef, clings to the flanks of all the volcanic islands from the east end of Timor to the west end of Java. These modern calcareous strata are often white and chalk-like, sometimes 1000 feet and upwards above the sea, regularly stratified in thick horizontal beds, and they show that there has been a general elevation of these islands at a comparatively modern period.[480]
The same linear arrangement which is observed in Java holds good in the volcanoes of Sumatra, some of which are of great height, as Berapi, which is more than 12,000 feet above the sea, and is continually smoking. Hot springs are abundant at its base. The volcanic line then inclines slightly to the northwest, and points to Barren Island, lat. 12° 15´ N., in the Bay of Bengal. This volcano was in eruption in 1792, and will be described in the twenty-sixth chapter. The volcanic train then extends, according to Dr. Macclelland, to the island of Narcondam, lat. 13° 22´ N., which is a cone seven or eight hundred feet high, rising from deep water, and said to present signs of lava currents descending from the crater to the base. Afterwards the train stretches in the same direction to the volcanic island of Ramree, about lat. 19° N., and the adjoining island of Cheduba, which is represented in old charts as a burning mountain. Thus we arrive at the Chittagong coast, which in 1762 was convulsed by a tremendous earthquake (see chap. [29]).[481]
To enumerate all the volcanic regions of the Indian and Pacific oceans would lead me far beyond the proper limits of this treatise; but it will appear in the last chapter of this volume, when coral reefs are treated of, that the islands of the Pacific consist alternately of linear groups of two classes, the one lofty, and containing active volcanoes, and marine strata above the sea-level, and which have been undergoing upheaval in modern times; the other very low, consisting of reefs of coral, usually with lagoons in their centres, and in which there is evidence of a gradual subsidence of the ground. The extent and direction of these parallel volcanic bands have been depicted with great care by Darwin in his map before cited (p. [351]).
The most remarkable theatre of volcanic activity in the Northern Pacific—or, perhaps, in the whole world—occurs in the Sandwich Islands, which have been admirably treated of in a recent work by Mr. Dana.[482]
Volcanic region from central Asia to the Azores.—Another great region of subterranean disturbance is that which has been imagined to extend through a large part of Central Asia to the Azores, that is to say, from China and Tartary through Lake Aral and the Caspian to the Caucasus, and the countries bordering the Black Sea, then again through part of Asia Minor to Syria, and westward to the Grecian Islands, Greece, Naples, Sicily, the southern part of Spain, Portugal and the Azores. Respecting the eastern extremity of this line in China, we have little information, but many violent earthquakes are known to have occurred there. The volcano said to have been in eruption in the seventh century in Central Tartary is situated on the northern declivity of the Celestial Mountains, not far distant from the large lake called Issikoul; and Humboldt mentions other vents and solfataras in the same quarter, which are all worthy of notice, as being far more distant from the ocean (260 geographical miles) than any other known points of eruption.
We find on the western shores of the Caspian, in the country round Baku, a tract called the Field of Fire, which continually emits inflammable gas, while springs of naphtha and petroleum occur in the same vicinity, as also mud volcanoes. Syria and Palestine abound in volcanic appearances, and very extensive areas have been shaken, at different periods, with great destruction of cities and loss of lives. Continual mention is made in history of the ravages committed by earthquakes in Sidon, Tyre, Berytus, Laodicea, and Antioch, and in the Island of Cyprus. The country around the Dead Sea appears evidently, from the accounts of modern travellers, to be volcanic. A district near Smyrna, in Asia Minor, was termed by the Greeks Catacecaumene, or "the burnt up," where there is a large arid territory, without trees, and with a cindery soil.[483] This country was visited in 1841 by Mr. W. J. Hamilton, who found in the valley of the Hermus perfect cones of scoriæ, with lava-streams, like those of Auvergne, conforming to the existing river-channels, and with their surface undecomposed.[484]