ed out of the Straits of Gibraltar down the coast of Africa,
and saw the great peak far to the westward, with the clouds cutting off
its top; and said that it was a mighty giant, the brother of the Evening
Star, who held up the sky upon his shoulders, in the midst of the
Fortunate Islands, the gardens of the daughter of the Evening Star, full
of strange golden fruits; and that Perseus had turned him into stone,
when he passed him with the Gorgon's Head.

But you will see, too, that most of these red and black dots run in
crooked lines; and that many of the clusters run in lines likewise.

Look at one line: by far the largest on the earth. You will learn a good
deal of geography from it.

The red dots begin at a place called the Terribles, on the east side of
the Bay of Bengal. They run on, here and there, along the islands of
Sumatra and Java, and through the Spice Islands; and at New Guinea the
line of red dots forks. One branch runs south-east, through islands
whose names you never heard, to the Friendly Islands, and to New Zealand.
The other runs north, through the Philippines, through Japan, through
Kamschatka; and then there is a little break of sea, between Asia and
America: but beyond it, the red dots begin again in the Aleutian Islands,
and then turn down the whole west coast of America, down from Mount Elias
(in what was, till lately, Russian America) towards British Columbia.
Then, after a long gap, there are one or two in Lower California (and we
must not forget the terrible earthquake which has just shaken San
Francisco, between those two last places); and when we come down to
Mexico we find the red dots again plentiful, and only too plentiful; for
they mark the great volcanic line of Mexico, of which you will read, I
hope, some day, in Humboldt's works. But the line does not stop there.
After the little gap of the Isthmus of Panama, it begins again in Quito,
the very country which has just been shaken, and in which stand the huge
volcanos Chimborazo, Pasto, Antisana, Cotopaxi, Pichincha,
Tunguragua,--smooth cones from 15,000 to 20,000 feet high, shining white
with snow, till the heat inside melts it off, and leaves the cinders of
which the peaks are made all black and ugly among the clouds, ready to
burst in smoke and fire. South of them again, there is a long gap, and
then another line of red dots--Arequiba, Chipicani, Gualatieri,
Atacama,--as high as, or higher than those in Quito; and this, remembe