ities and are confined
to limited regions of the earth's surface. What do we know of those
deep-lying powers, those vast buried forces dwelling in uneasy isolation
beneath our feet? With all our science we are but a step beyond the
ancients, to whom these were the Titans, great rebel giants whom Jupiter
overthrew and bound under the burning mountains, and whose throes of
agony shook the earth in quaking convulsions. To us the volcanic crater
is the mouth from which comes the fiery breath of demon powers which
dwell far down in the earth's crust. The Titans themselves were dwarfs
beside these mighty agents of destruction whose domain extends for
thousands of miles beneath the earth's surface and which in their
convulsions shake whole continents at once. Such was the case in 1812,
when the eruption of Mont Soufriere on St. Vincent, as told in a later
chapter, formed merely the closing event in a series of earthquakes
which had made themselves felt under thousands of miles of land.

ANCIENT AWE OF VOLCANOES

In olden times volcanoes were regarded with superstitious awe, and it
would have been considered highly impious to make any investigation of
their actions. We are told by Virgil that Mt. Etna marks the spot where
the gods in their anger buried Enceladus, one of the rebellious giants.
To our myth-making ancestors one of the volcanoes of the Mediterranean,
set on a small island of the Lipari group, was the workshop of Vulcan,
the god of fire, within whose depths he forged the thunderbolts of the
gods. From below came sounds as of a mighty hammer on a vast anvil.
Through the mountain vent came the black smoke and lurid glow from
the fires of Vulcan's forge. This old myth is in many respects more
consonant with the facts of nature than myths usually are. In agreement
with the theory of its internal forces, the mountain in question was
given the name of Volcano. To-day it is scarcely known at all, but its
name clings to all the fire-breathing mountains of the earth.

As before said, at the present day we are little in advance of the
ancients in actual knowledge of what is going on so far beneath our
feet. We speak of forces where they spoke of fettered giants, but can
only form theories where they formed myths. Is the earth's centre made
up of liquid fire? Does its rock crust resemble the thick ice crust on
the Arctic Seas, or is the earth, as later scientists believe, solid to
the core? Is it heated so fiercely, mile