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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The
Sound Of The Explosion Is Described As Resembling That Of Alternate
Discharges Of Very Large Cannon And Musketry; And
It is worthy of
remark, that it seemed much louder to persons out at sea, and at a
great distance
From land, than to those within sight of land, and
near the burning volcano.
The distance in a straight line from the volcano of St. Vincent to
the Rio Apure, near the mouth of the Nula, is two hundred and ten
leagues.* (* Where the contrary is not expressly stated, nautical
leagues of twenty to a degree, or two thousand eight hundred and
fifty-five toises, are always to be understood.) The explosions
were consequently heard at a distance equal to that between
Vesuvius and Paris. This phenomenon, in conjunction with a great
number of facts observed in the Cordilleras of the Andes, shows
that the sphere of the subterranean activity of a volcano is much
more extensive than we should be disposed to admit, if we judged
merely from the small changes effected at the surface of the globe.
The detonations heard during whole days together in the New World,
eighty, one hundred, or even two hundred leagues distant from a
crater, do not reach us by the propagation of the sound through the
air; they are transmitted by the earth, perhaps in the very place
where we happen to be. If the eruptions of the volcano of St.
Vincent, Cotopaxi, or Tunguragua, resounded from afar, like a
cannon of immense magnitude, the noise ought to increase in the
inverse ratio of the distance:
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Words from 192547 to 192810
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