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They were to be marine volcanos, which, drifting down the river with tide, were to deal destruction where the Spaniards themselves most secure. In the hold of each vessel, along the whole length, was laid down a solid flooring of brick and mortar, one foot thick and five feet wide. This was the crater.
As the luminary was vanishing, the whole horizon glowed like copper run from a smelting furnace, and when it had quite disappeared, the little inequalities of the ragged edges of the mist were lighted up and shone like a row of volcanos in the far distance.
Almost every volcano in the world, I believe, is, or has been once, of the shape which you see in the drawing opposite; even those volcanos in the Sandwich Islands, of which you have often heard, which are now great lakes of boiling fire upon flat downs, without any cone to them at all.
These two volcanos, and some neighbouring ones, continued for a long time in eruption, and ten months afterwards were again influenced by an earthquake at Concepcion.
Examine their palaces, their basins of porphyry, urns and vases of Numidian marble, catacombs, and subterranean cities; their sculptured heroes, triumphal arches, and amphitheatres in which a nation might assemble; their Corinthian columns hewn from the rocks of Egypt, and obelisks of granite transported by some strange but forgotten means from Alexandria; the simplicity the grandeur and beauty of their temples and churches; the vast fruitfulness of their lands, their rich vineyards, teeming fields, and early harvests; the mingled sublime and beautiful over the face of nature in this country, which is sheltered from invaders by mountains and seas, so as by a small degree of art to render it impregnable; their desolating earthquakes, which yet seem but to renovate fertility; their volcanos, sending forth volumes of flame and rivers of fire, and overwhelming cities which though they have buried they have not utterly destroyed; these and a thousand other particulars, which I can neither enumerate nor remember, apparently speak them a race the most favoured of heaven, and announce Italy to be a country for whose embellishment and renown earth and heaven, men and gods have for ages contended.
This silly belief is curious, because it shows that experience has taught them to observe, that there exists a relation between the suppressed action of the volcanos, and the trembling of the ground. It was necessary to apply the witchcraft to the point where their perception of cause and effect failed; and this was the closing of the volcanic vent.
Hence in these cases it would appear that volcanos burst forth into action and become extinguished on the same spots, accordingly as elevatory or subsiding movements prevail there.
So it seems as if these lines of volcanos stood along cracks in the rind of the earth, through which the melted stuff inside was for ever trying to force its way; and that, as the crack got stopped up in one place by the melted stuff cooling and hardening again into stone, it was burst in another place, and a fresh volcano made, or an old one re-opened.
Hence in these cases it would appear, that volcanos burst forth into action and become extinguished on the same spots, accordingly as elevatory or subsiding movements prevail there.
This was sometimes troublesome: I found the most ready way of explaining my employment was to ask them how it was that they themselves were not curious concerning earthquakes and volcanos? why some springs were hot and others cold? why there were mountains in Chile, and not a hill in La Plata?
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