And round the Blue Ridge make all rattle.
Volney informs us in his View that the Alleghany mountain is the frontier on which the south-west and north-west winds in America contend; and that he beheld a spectacle of that kind at Rockfish Gap, on the Blue Ridge. See American edition, page 148.
Huge, hissing hot, and hard as granite.
It is to me a matter of doubt whether your worships are not absolutely ignorant of the causes and effects of the wonderful phenomena to which we now allude. But if you will please to take with us a stand for observation, exactly at the centre of gravity between the earth and the moon, and look about you with the eyes of great philosophers you will perceive what is well worth a world of admiration.
You will perceive that what is vulgarly called the man in the moon is a prodigious volcano, in size much superior to any on our globe, and that this volcano is continually emitting rocks, which ever and anon are thrown beyond the sphere of the moon’s attraction, and of course make their way down upon us.
You will likewise find, by turning to the second volume of the Philadelphia Literary Magazine, page 389, an account of above thirty different showers of stones, some of which have weighed not less than 300 pounds. And you will ascertain that there has been a great diversity of opinions among philosophers respecting the origin of these prodigies. Some have believed them to be thrown from some neighboring volcano. Some have thought them to have been wafted about by hurricanes. Others have supposed them to have been concretions formed in the atmosphere. Some have thought them to be masses which were detached from the planets at the time of the formation; and that they have been floating about in infinite space till they met with our earth, which became to them a new centre of gravity.
But the truth is, as you may see through any common optical tube, from the situation to which I have just had the honor to conduct you, that these masses of matter are the product of lunar volcanos. Here we have a cause adequate to the effect, as I shall make evident in the following few words.
A lunar volcano similar to those on our planet would project bodies much further from the moon than they would be thrown by the same force from Etna or Vesuvius; for,
1. It is granted by great philosophers, such as ourself and Dr Darwin, that the moon has no atmosphere; of consequence, a body exploded from the moon would meet with no resistance excepting from the power of gravitation. Dr Darwin informs us, Botanic Garden, canto ii. “If the moon had no atmosphere at the time of its elevation from the earth; or if its atmosphere was afterwards stolen from it by the earth’s attraction, the water on the moon would rise quickly into vapor; and the cold produced by a certain quantity of this evaporation would congeal the remainder of it. Hence it is not probable that the moon is at present inhabited; but as it seems to have suffered and to continue to suffer much by volcanos, a sufficient quantity of air may in process of time be generated to produce an atmosphere, which may prevent its heat from so easily escaping, and its water from so easily evaporating, and thence become fit for the production of vegetables and animals.