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Show 320 VOLCANIC REGION EXTENDING FROM times, varied in form; and that, near the south coast, the Isle of Idak north from Astrabat, formerly high land, has now become very 'low*. Any indications of ~ change in the relative l.evels of the land in this part of Asia are of more than ordmary interest because a succession of similar variations would accoun; for many prominent features in the physical geography of the district between the salt lake Aral, and the western shores of the Euxine-a district well known to have been always subject to great earthquakes. The level of the Caspian is lower than that of the Black Sea, by more than £fty feet. A low and level tract, called the Steppe, abounding in saline plants and said to contain shells of species now common in the adjoining sea, skirts the sho~es of the Caspian, o~ the ~orthwest. This plain often termmates abruptly by a lme of mland cliffs at the base of which runs a kind of beach, consisting of frag~ents of limestone and sand, cemented together in~o a conglomerate. Pallas has en~eav~m:ed to show th~t there IS an old line of sandy country, wh1eh mdiCates the ancient bed of a strait, by which the Caspian Sea was once united to that of Azof. On similar gl'Ounds, it is inferred that the salt lake Aral was formerly connected with the Caspian. However modern in the earth's history the convulsions may be which have produced the phenomena of the st~ppes, it is .consistent with analogy to suppose that a very mmute port1~n of the whole change has happened in the last twenty or thirty centuries. Yet, if we possessed more authentic records of physical events, we should probably discover that some small portion of those great revolutions have fallen within sue? recent periods. Remote traditions have come down to us of mundations in which the waters of the Black Sea were forced through the 'fhracian Bosphorus, and through the Hellespont, into the ....Egean. In the deluge of Samothrace, it appea~s that that small island, and the adjoining coast of As.ia, were. mundate~; and in the Ogygian, which happened at a different ttme, ~reotia and Attica were overflowed. Notwithstanding the mixture of fable, and the love of the marvellous, in those ru.de ~ges, and the subsequent inventions of Greek poets and histonans, • Travels in the Crimea and Caucasus, in 1815, vol. i., pp. 257 and 264.-HofF, vol. i., p. 137. THE CASPIAN TO TilE AZORES. 321 it may be disti?ctly perceived that the floods alluded to were local and transient, and that they happen ed m· successi·O n near the borders of that ch.a in of inland seas . Tl1 ey seem, t h ere-fore, to have been notlung more than great wa h' h b f . ves, w Ic , a out fi teen centunes before our era, devastated the borders of the Black. Sea, the .S ea of Marmora' the Arohi'pel ago an d net· gh - bounng coasts.' m the same manner as the western shores of Portugal, Spam, and Nor~hern Africa were inundated, during the great earthquake at Lisbon by a wave wi11'ch r . ' o 5 e, m• some places, .to the he1ght of fifty or sixty feet ; or as happened in Peru, m 1_746, where two hundred violent shocks followed each other m the space of twenty-four hours and th b k · 1 • ' e ocean ro e wit 1 Impetuous force upon the land, destroying the tow~ of Callao, and. fou~ other seaports, and converting a considerable tract of mhabtted country into a bay. In the country between the Caspian and the Black S d I·? h h · f eas, an t e c am o Caucasus, numerous earthquakes have, in modern t1~~\ caused fissure~ and s~bsi?ences of the soil, especially at T~fhs . The Caucasian territories abound in hot-springs and mmeral waters. So late as 1814, a new island was raised by volcat~ic explosions, in the Sea of Azof; and Pallas mentions that, ~n the same lo:ality, opposite old Temruk, a submarine er?ptlon ~ook place m 1799, accompanied with dreadful thundermg, emission of fire and smoke, and the throwing up of mire and sto~1es. Violent earthquakes were felt at the same time at great distances from Temruk. The country around Erzerum exhibits similar phenomena, as does that around Tauris and the lak~ of Urm.ia, in which latter we have already remarked the rapid formation of travertin. The lake of U rmia, which is about two hundred and eighty English miles in circumference resembles the Dead Sea, in having no outlet, and in being mor~ salt than the ocean. Between the Tigris and Euphrates also there are numerous springs of naphtha, and frequent ~arth: quakes agitate the country. Syria and Palestine abound in volcanic appearances and ve.r y ex t ens1· ve areas have been shaken, at different per' iods With great destruction of cities and loss of lives. ' It has been remarked, by Von Hoff~ that from the commencement of the thirteenth to the latter half of the seventeenth century ther I . . ' e was an a most entire cessation of earthquakes Yor •• I. "' HofF, vol, ii., p. 210. y |