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Updated: May 5, 2025
No gloom down there, no black scoriae, no returning streams of lava, nor debris of pumice-stone; but, on the contrary, a smiling vegetation trees with foliage of different shades, among which can be distinguished the dark-green frondage of the live-oak and pecan, the more brilliant verdure of cottonwoods, and the flower-loaded branches of the wild China-tree.
Hot cinders and fine scoriae were then cast up to a vast height, and covered the ground as they fell to the depth of more than ten feet, for a distance of eight leagues from the crater, in a southerly direction. Birds, cattle, and wild animals were scorched to death in great numbers, and buried in ashes.
The remarkable linear arrangement of volcanic vents has a significance that is well worthy of fuller consideration. There are facts known which point to the cause of this state of affairs. It is not uncommon for small cones of scoriae to be seen following lines on the flanks or at the base of a great volcanic mountain. These are undoubtedly lines of fissure, caused by the subterranean forces.
From a little mahogany table there I had knocked sideways to the ground, in my stumble, a small phonograph with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the moment that I now noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the stairs: for that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being indeed evident that its clock-work mechanism had been stopped by the volcanic scoriae in the midst of the delivery of a record, but had been started into a few fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter those thirteen words, and stop.
We must also take into consideration, that one fissure may be simply filled with lava, which may begin to cool from the first; whereas in other cases the fissure may give passage to a current of melted matter, which may ascend for days or months, feeding streams which are overflowing the country above, or being ejected in the shape of scoriae from some crater.
Two, however, of the sixteen had their northern sides also low, whilst their eastern and western sides were perfect. I did not see, or hear of, a single exception to the rule, of these craters being broken down or low on the side, which faces a point of the horizon between S.E. and S.W. This rule does not apply to craters composed of lava and scoriae.
The volcanoes just mentioned, particularly those of the Andes, which rise above the enormous height of two thousand five hundred toises, present great advantages for observation. The periods of their eruptions are singularly regular. They remain thirty or forty years without emitting scoriae, ashes, or even vapours.
Atkin notes, in the very centre of the island, a curious rock, about 200 feet high, and on the top, 20 or 30 feet from the nearest visible soil, a she-oak stump, and two more green and flourishing a little below. The rock was of black scoriae, too hot in the middle of the day to sit upon, and near it was a pool of water.
Again a change! A desert of sand, over the surface of which move tall dun columns of swirling dust, like the gigantic phantoms of some spirit-world. Still another plain, black with lava and the scoriae of extinct volcanoes black, treeless, and herbless with not an atom of organic matter upon its desolate surface.
This cone is composed of layers of scoriae, pumice- stones, and their fine detritus, with interposed beds of trachyte and basalt, which descend often in uninterrupted sheets until they reach and spread themselves round the base of the mountain.
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