After the first day the violence gradually diminished, and in a
week had ceased. Very possibly another lake will be formed, and in time
other terraces; but it is hardly within the range of probability that
the beauty of the lost terraces will ever be paralleled.
In this eruption, as usual, we find the earthquake preceding the
volcanic outburst. New Zealand, like the Philippines, Java and the
Japanese Islands, is situated over a great earth-fissure or line of
weakness. Subsidence or dislocation from tensile strain of the crust
took place, and the influx of water to new regions of heated strata
may have developed the explosive force. The earthquake and the volcano
worked together here, as they frequently do, unfortunately in this case
destroying one of the most beautiful scenes on the surface of the globe.
THE ANTARCTIC VOLCANOES
Much further south, on the frozen shore of Victoria Land in the
Antarctic regions, Sir James Ross, in 1841, sailing in his discovery
ships the Erebus and Terror, discovered two great volcanic mountains,
which he named after those two vessels. Mount Erebus is continually
covered, from top to bottom, with snow and glaciers. The mountain is
about 12,000 feet high, and although the snow reaches to the very edge
of the crater, there rise continually from the summit immense volumes of
volcanic fumes, illuminated by the glare of glowing lava beneath them.
The vapors ascend to an estimated height of 2,200 feet above the top of
the mountain.
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