s the result of his investigations,
made during the French expedition to the Morea in 1829, that there is no
one determinate line of direction for the volcanic phenomena in Greece,
whether we follow the points of eruptions, or the earthquakes, or any
other signs of igneous agency.[485]

Macedonia, Thrace, and Epirus, have always been subject to earthquakes,
and the Ionian Isles are continually convulsed.

Respecting Southern Italy, Sicily, and the Lipari Isles, it is
unnecessary to enlarge here, as I shall have occasion again to allude to
them. I may mention, however, that a band of volcanic action has been
traced by Dr. Daubeny across the Italian Peninsula, from Ischia to Mount
Vultur, in Apulia, the commencement of the line being found in the hot
springs of Ischia, after which it is prolonged through Vesuvius to the
Lago d'Ansanto, where gases similar to those of Vesuvius are evolved.
Its farther extension strikes Mount Vultur, a lofty cone composed of
tuff and lava, from one side of which carbonic acid and sulphuretted
hydrogen are emitted.[486]

_Traditions of deluges._--The traditions which have come down to us from
remote ages of great inundations said to have happened in Greece and on
the confines of the Grecian settlements, had doubtless their origin in a
series of local catastrophes, caused principally by earthquakes. The
frequent migrations of the earlier inhabitants, and the total want of
written annals long after the first settlement of each country, make it
impossible for us at this distance of time to fix either the true
localities or probable dates of these events. The first philosophical
writers of Greece were, therefore, as much at a loss as ourselves to
offer a reasonable conjecture on these points, or to decide how many
catastrophes might sometimes have become confounded in one tale, or how
much this tale may have been amplified, in after times, or obscured by
mythological fiction. The floods of Ogyges and Deucalion are commonly
said to have happened before the Trojan war; that of Ogyges more than
seventeen, and that of Deucalion more than fifteen centuries before our
era. As to the Ogygian flood, it is generally described as having laid
waste Attica, and was referred by some writers to a great overflowing of
rivers, to which cause Aristotle also attributed the deluge of
Deucalion, which, he says, affected Hellas only, or the central part of
Thessaly. Others imagined the same event to have been due