What does she mean? What can she mean, O Ye that made her? Is she
herself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said that
ships were living entities? And that thing that wheeled at the Pole,
wheels it still yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy? Strange that
volcanoes are all near the sea: I don't know why; I don't think that
anyone ever knew. This fact, in connection with submarine explosions,
used to be cited in support of the chemical theory of volcanoes, which
supposed the infiltration of the sea into ravines containing the
materials which form the fuel of eruptions: but God knows if that is
true. The lofty ones are intermittent--a century, two, ten, of silent
waiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; the
low ones are constant in action. Who could know the dark way of the
world? Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several vents
which extend in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some long
foundry beneath. In mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes the
presence of dolomites; rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles,
crystalline schists.
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