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A Strange Discovery by Charles Romyn Dake
page 86 of 201 (42%)

"Now look at my map. This inner circle represents the present area of
boiling lava, which, as I have said, is about fifteen miles in
diameter--the South Pole, according to the natives, being at about the
point corresponding to this dot, marked 'a.' The ring next without the
circle I have made to represent a zone of lava which is at its inner
edge white-hot, and at its outer edge red-hot, its width, let us say, as
the division is arbitrary, about four miles. The second circle
represents a zone of lava which is dull red at its inner edge, and
black, but hot, at its outer. Of course the lava blends away from
white-hot within, to barely warm without; but I thus map it, the better
to picture reigning conditions. The next circle, some four or five miles
in width, represents a ring of cold lava-blocks, masses of rock-salt,
and animalculine remains, from twenty-five to two hundred feet high.
Outside of this last-mentioned zone, we have several rings of volcanic
mountains with intervening valleys, and many active craters at the
summit of mountains; while on the mountain-sides lie numerous masses of
rock-salt, thrown from below by eruptive action, glistening in the
brilliant volcanic light, and slowly deliquescing. This zone of
mountains and valleys is from ten to twenty miles in width, and whilst
in the main its mountains are not more than from half a mile to a mile
high, it contains peaks of five or six miles in height, and there is one
peak which rises nine miles above the sea-level.

"I want you to look particularly at these larger mountain-ranges, one at
the right, the other at the left side of my map--each of which as it
stretches out into the sea divides into two smaller chains. Upon these
ranges, and the comparatively diminutive height of the intervening
mountains, in connection with the fact that there is a constant
wind-current from the lower Pacific (generally speaking, from the west
DigitalOcean Referral Badge