very curious instance of that.

If you look at the West Indies on the map, you will see a line of red
dots runs through the Windward Islands: there are two volcanos in them,
one in Guadaloupe, and one in St. Vincent (I will tell you a curious
story, presently, about that last), and little volcanos (if they have
ever been real volcanos at all), which now only send out mud, in
Trinidad. There the red dots stop: but then begins along the north coast
of South America a line of mountain country called Cumana, and Caraccas,
which has often been horribly shaken by earthquakes. Now once, when the
volcano in St. Vincent began to pour out a vast stream of melted lava, a
noise like thunder was heard underground, over thousands of square miles
beyond those mountains, in the plains of Calabozo, and on the banks of
the Apure, more than 600 miles away from the volcano,--a plain sign that
there was something underground which joined them together, perhaps a
long crack in the earth. Look for yourselves at the places, and you will
see that (as Humboldt says) it is as strange as if an eruption of Mount
Vesuvius was heard in the north of France.

So it seems as if these lines of volcanos stood along cracks in the rind
of the earth, through which the melted stuff inside was for ever trying
to force its way; and that, as the crack got stopped up in one place by
the melted stuff cooling and hardening again into stone, it was burst in
another place, and a fresh volcano made, or an old one re-opened.

Now we can understand why earthquakes should be most common round
volcanos; and we can understand, too, why they would be worst before a
volcano breaks out, because then the steam is trying to escape; and we
can understand, too, why people who live near volcanos are glad to see
them blazing and spouting, because then they have hope that the steam has