st 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, un