Then it forced a passage through a subterranean cavity
twenty-seven miles long, and reached the sea forty miles distant, in two
days. The stream where it fell into the sea was half a mile wide, and
the flow kept up for three weeks, heating the ocean twenty miles from
land. An eye-witness of this extraordinary flow thus describes it:
"When the torrent of fire precipitated itself into the ocean, the
scene assumed a character of terrific and indescribable grandeur. The
magnificence of destruction was never more perceptibly displayed than
when these antagonistic elements met in deadly strife. The mightiest of
earth's magazines of fire poured forth its burning billows to meet the
mightiest of oceans. For two score miles it came rolling, tumbling,
swelling forward, an awful agent of death. Rocks melted like wax in its
path; forests crackled and blazed before its fervent heat; the works of
man were to it but as a scroll in the flames. Imagine Niagara's stream,
above the brink of the Falls, with its dashing, whirling, madly-raging
waters hurrying on to their plunge, instantaneously converted into fire;
a gory-hued river of fused minerals; volumes of hissing steam arising;
some curling upward from ten thousand vents, which give utterance to
as many deep-toned mutterings, and sullen, confined clamorings; gases
detonating and shrieking as they burst from their hot prison-house;
the heavens lurid with flame; the atmosphere dark and oppressive; the
horizon murky with vapors and gleaming with the reflected contest!
"Such was the scene as the fiery cataract, leaping a precipice of fifty
feet, poured its flood upon the ocean.
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