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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
FISSURE ERUPTIONS.
IN ALL SHADES.
CUSTOMS’ OFFICERS AND WRECKS.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
A BARRACK GHOST STORY.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
DOLLY.
No. 113.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1886.
FISSURE ERUPTIONS.
Those who have been accustomed to regardvolcanoes such as Vesuvius or Etna as the oneform of volcanic action, may be somewhat startledby the statement that lavas have sometimes beenpoured forth from fissures hundreds of miles inlength, and have deluged vast tracts of countrybeneath sheets of molten rock, compared withwhich the puny lava-fields of Italy sink intoinsignificance. History, romance, and legend havebeen so long associated with the group of volcanoesoverlooking the quiet Tyrrhenian Sea, thatfrom the time when Pindar sung of the fire-floodsof Etna, and Pliny died, too rashly investigatingthe great eruption of Vesuvius, till Scrope, Lyell,Von Buch, and Palmieri made them the centreof their researches, they have occupied too largea share of attention, and have been thus regardedas the full normal development of that volcanicactivity of which they are but a phase, and onlya minor phase. Hence, when, eighteen years ago,Richthofen described the great lava-plains ofWestern America, and attributed their origin toejection from fissures, and not from vents, sofirm a hold had been taken of the minds of geologistsby nearly twenty centuries of observation ofVesuvius and its fellows, that his arguments werereceived with incredulity; and though they havebeen amply verified by subsequent investigations,and have afforded the clue to the interpretationof the vast series of volcanic rocks in otherquarters of the globe, they have not been generallycirculated, and few, outside the circle ofgeologists, are acquainted with them.
In this paper, we propose briefly to describesome of the most noted of these ‘fissure’—oras Richthofen called them—‘massive’ eruptions,selecting as types that on the Snake River inthe United States, and those in India, Abyssinia,and the north-west of Europe; and finally, toglance at their possible connection with theform of volcanic excitement more frequentlydisplayed.
The one which has attracted most attention isthat which formed the plateau of the SnakeRiver, and which covers altogether, in Idaho,Oregon, and Washington, an extent of countryeq