FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56  
57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   >>   >|  
or never. How does that come to pass? Does a volcano make earthquakes? No; we may rather say that earthquakes are trying to make volcanos. For volcanos are the holes which the steam underground has burst open that it may escape into the air above. They are the chimneys of the great blast-furnaces underground, in which Madam How pounds and melts up the old rocks, to make them into new ones, and spread them out over the land above. And are there many volcanos in the world? You have heard of Vesuvius, of course, in Italy; and Etna, in Sicily; and Hecla, in Iceland. And you have heard, too, of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, and of Pele's Hair--the yellow threads of lava, like fine spun glass, which are blown from off its pools of fire, and which the Sandwich Islanders believed to be the hair of a goddess who lived in the crater;--and you have read, too, I hope, in Miss Yonge's _Book of Golden Deeds_, the noble story of the Christian chieftainess who, in order to persuade her subjects to become Christians also, went down into the crater and defied the goddess of the volcano, and came back unhurt and triumphant. But if you look at the map, you will see that there are many, many more. Get Keith Johnston's Physical Atlas from the schoolroom--of course it is there (for a schoolroom without a physical atlas is like a needle without an eye)--and look at the map which is called "Phenomena of Volcanic Action." You will see in it many red dots, which mark the volcanos which are still burning: and black dots, which mark those which have been burning at some time or other, not very long ago, scattered about the world. Sometimes they are single, like the red dot at Otaheite, or at Easter Island in the Pacific. Sometimes the are in groups, or clusters, like the cluster at the Sandwich Islands, or in the Friendly Islands, or in New Zealand. And if we look in the Atlantic, we shall see four clusters: one in poor half- destroyed Iceland, in the far north, one in the Azores, one in the Canaries, and one in the Cape de Verds. And there is one dot in those Canaries which we must not overlook, for it is no other than the famous Peak of Teneriffe, a volcano which is hardly burnt out yet, and may burn up again any day, standing up out of the sea more than 12,000 feet high still, and once it must have been double that height. Some think that it is perhaps the true Mount Atlas, which the old Greeks named when first they ventur
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56  
57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

volcanos

 

Islands

 
volcano
 

Sandwich

 

goddess

 

clusters

 

Canaries

 

schoolroom

 

Sometimes

 

burning


crater
 

Iceland

 

earthquakes

 

underground

 

height

 

double

 

scattered

 

Action

 

Phenomena

 

Greeks


needle

 

ventur

 

called

 

Volcanic

 

single

 

destroyed

 

Azores

 

Teneriffe

 

physical

 
famous

Atlantic

 
Easter
 

Island

 

Otaheite

 

standing

 

overlook

 

Friendly

 

Zealand

 

cluster

 

Pacific


groups

 

spread

 

pounds

 

Vesuvius

 

yellow

 

threads

 

Kilauea

 
Sicily
 

furnaces

 

chimneys