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Show 322 VOLCANIC REGION EXTENDING FROM in Syria and Judea; and, during this interva1 of quiescence, the Archipelago, together with part of the adjacent coast of Lesser Asia, as also Southern Italy and Sicily, suffered extraordinary convulsions; while volcanic eruptions in those parts were unusually frequent. A more extended comparison, also, of the history of the subterranean convulsions of these tracts seems to confirm the opinion, that a violent crisis of commotion never visits both at the same time. It is impossible for us to declare, as yet, whether this phenomenon is constant in this, or general in other regions, because we can rarely trace back a connected series of events farther than a few centuries; but it is well known that, where numerous vents are clustered together within a small area, as in many archipelagos for instance, two of them are never in violent eruption at once. If the action of one becomes very great for a century or more, the others assume the appearance of spent volcanos. It is, therefore, not improbable that separate provinces of the same range of volcanic fires may hold a re1ation to one deep~seated focus, analagous to that which the apertures of a small group bear to some one rent or cavity. 'fhus, for example, we may conjecture that, at a comparatively small distance from the surface, Ischia and Vesuvius mutually communicate with certain fissures, and that each afford relief alternately to elastic fluids and lava there generated. So we may suppose Southern Italy and Syria to be connected, at a much greater depth, with a lower part of the very same system of fissures; in which case any obstruction occurring in one duct may have the effect of causing almost all the vapour and melted matter to be forced up the other, and if they cannot get vent, they may be the cause of violent earthquakes. Continual mention is made in history of the ravages com-mitted by earthquakes in Sidon, Tyre, Berytus, Laodicea, and Antioch, as also in the island of Cyprus. The country around the Dead Sea appears evidently, from the accounts of modern travellers, to be volcanic; and there are similar appearances, according to Burckhardt, in Arabia Petrea. A district near Smyrna, in Asia Minor, was termed by the Greeks Catace~aumene, or the burnt, where there is a large arid territory, wllh~ out trees, and with a cindery soil *'. Proceeding westwards, we reach the Grecian archipelago, "' Strabo1 Ed, Fa1.1 p. 900, 'rilE CASI'IAN TO THE AZORES. 323 where Santorin, afterwards t b d . of volcanic action. T th 0 e escrJbed, is the grand centre 1 . o e north-west f S t . . vo cano, m the island of M .1 ° an orm Is another acti·v e so ]1i! atara in its cent I o, of recent 1 · 1 aspect, 1avmg a very water and steam C rt~ c~ater, and many sources of boiling . . on mum()" precis 1 h arrive at that part of th M 0 e Y t e same line, we wn·t ers, that Helice and Be orea ' where we I earn, f rom ancient merged beneath the sea ~a were, in the year 373 B. C., sub-according to Ovid, were to ~e ::e earthquake; and the walls, the same spot, in our ti t beneath the waters. Near ruins by a subterranean co mesl . ( 817)' Vostizza was laid in nvu s10n * At M h Modon), in Messenia about th . . et one, also (now eruption threw up a ~reat l ree. centuries before our era, an sented by Strabo as be· vo ~an;c mountain, which is repre-but the magnitude of ti:gh ?lelar y .our thousand feet in height. h e I reqmres confirmaf S ' pose t at the accounts of the for . . Ion. orne sup-of which the date is unk matlon of a lnll near Trrezene Macedonia, Thrace and nEow.n, mahy refer to the same event' h ' ptrus ave al b b' • cart quakes and the I . I l' ways een su ~ect to R ' oman s es are c t" 11 especting Southern Italy, Sicil and on .mu~ y convulsed. not enlarge here as th . y, the Lipan Isles, we need is known to a11' d e existence of volcanos in that region to them. ' an we shall have occasion again to allude . The north-eastern portion f Af: . , . hes six or seven deo-rees s o nca, Includmg Egypt, which traced, has been alm~st I outh of the volcanic line already the north-western portia ways e~~mpt from earthquakes; but fall within the line su~n, especila ly Fez and Morocco, which southern part of S '. ler great y from time to time. The pam, a so and PortuO" ) 1 exposed to the same ' . . oa' lave generally been Africa. 'fhe pro . scou~ge stmultaneously with Northern and in Portugal t~nces o Malaga, Murcia, and Grenada l , e country round Li b , sevcra periods to h b s on, are recorded at It will be seen fro:e ~e~ d~vastated by great earthquakes bhock in 1755, that the fir:~ ells account of the great Lisbo~ of the ocean ten or fift ~ovement proceeded from the bed as February~ 1816 ~n ea?ues from the coast. So late two ships felt ~ shock :V e~ Lisbon was vehemently shak~n them at the distance ~~ t e ocean west from Lisbon ; one of other two hundr~d d ~ne hundred and twenty, and the an sixty-two French leagues from tb "' Hoff, vol. ii., P• J72, e Y2 |