Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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We Must Not Consider The Fact As Merely
Accidental, That We Have Not Yet Discovered An Active Volcano More
Than
40 leagues distant from the ocean; but I consider the
hypothesis, that the waters of the sea are absorbed, distilled,
And
decomposed by volcanoes, as very doubtful.) We may find a very
simple explanation of a phenomenon, that has in it nothing very
surprising. The peak is covered with snow during part of the year;
we ourselves found it still so in the plain of Rambleta. Messrs.
O'Donnel and Armstrong discovered in 1806 a very abundant spring in
the Malpays, a hundred toises above the cavern of ice, which is
perhaps fed partly by this snow. Everything consequently leads us
to presume that the peak of Teneriffe, like the volcanoes of the
Andes, and those of the island of Manilla, contains within itself
great cavities, which are filled with atmospherical water, owing
merely to filtration. The aqueous vapours exhaled by the Narices
and crevices of the crater, are only those same waters heated by
the interior surfaces down which they flow.
We had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the Piton,
which forms the summit. The slope of this small cone, covered with
volcanic ashes, and fragments of pumice-stone, is so steep, that it
would have been almost impossible to reach the top, had we not
ascended by an old current of lava, the debris of which have
resisted the ravages of time. These debris form a wall of scorious
rock, which stretches into the midst of the loose ashes.
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