HKB
while the branch which has been alluded to as striking southeast from the Moluccas, passes from New Guinea to New Zealand, conforming, though somewhat rudely, to the outline of Australia.[477]
The connection, however, of the New Guinea volcanoes with the line in Java (as laid down in Von Buch's map) is not clearly made out. By consulting Darwin's map of coral reefs and active volcanoes,[478] the reader will see that we might almost with equal propriety include the Mariana and Bonin volcanoes in a band with New Guinea. Or if we allow so much latitude in framing zones of volcanic action, we must also suppose the New Hebrides, Solomon Isles, and New Ireland to constitute one line (see map, fig. 39, p. 351).
The northern extremity of the volcanic region of Asia, as described by Von Buch, is on the borders of Cook's Inlet, northeast of the Peninsula of Alaska, where one volcano, in about the sixtieth degree of latitude, is said to be 14,000 feet high. In Alaska itself are cones of vast height, which have been seen in eruption, and which are covered for two-thirds of their height downwards with perpetual snow. The summit of the loftiest peak is truncated, and is said to have fallen in during an eruption in 1786. From Alaska the line is continued through the Aleutian or Fox Islands to Kamtschatka. In the Aleutian Archipelago eruptions are frequent, and about thirty miles to the north of Unalaska, near the Isle of Umnack, a new island was formed in 1796. It was first observed after a storm, at a point in the sea from which a column of smoke had been seen to rise. Flames then issued from the new islet which illuminated the country for ten miles round; a frightful earthquake shook the new-formed cone, and showers of stones were thrown as far as Umnack. The eruption continued for several months, and eight years afterwards, in 1804, when it was explored by some hunters, the soil was so hot in some places that they could not walk on it. According to Langsdorf and others, this new island, which is now several thousand feet high, and two or three miles in circumference, has been continually found to have increased in size when successively visited by different travellers; but we have no accurate means of determining how much of its growth, if any, has been due to upheaval, or how far it has been exclusively formed by the ejection of ashes and streams of lava. It seems, however, to be well attested that earthquakes of the most terrific description agitate and alter the bed of the sea and surface of the land throughout this tract.
The line is continued in the southern extremity of the Peninsula of Kamtschatka, where there are many active volcanoes, which, in some eruptions, have scattered ashes to immense distances. The largest and most active of these is Klutschew, lat. 56 degrees 3 minutes N., which rises at once from the sea to the prodigious height of 15,000 feet. Within 700 feet of the summit, Erman saw, in 1829, a current of lava, emitting a vivid light, flow down the northwest side to the foot of the cone. A flow of lava from the summit of Mont Blanc to its base in the valley of Chamouni would afford but an inadequate idea of the declivity down which this current descended. Large quantities of ice and snow opposed for a time a barrier to the lava, until at length the fiery torrent overcame, by its heat and pressure, this obstacle, and poured down the mountain side with a frightful noise, which was heard for a distance of more than fifty miles.[479]