The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-04-03
AMERICAN VOLCANOES.
The Terrestrial DIstul bance In NortI
CarOlin IA.

2 and growled and shal zen the earth f
{ twenty miles around, until the greatl
5 alarmed residents of t he vicinity hay
2 fed in terror of being the victims of e1
ragged Vulcan, and of be ling lost ami
the hot lava which woulit make of thei
settlements modern Po mpeii.
Bald mountain is in the southwest
erp edge of Mcdowell CO unity, Wester
North Carolina, sixteen miles due eas
: of Asheville, and rises, loftily towerin
among the clouds, to tt e left of Hickor
Nut Hollow. 1t is We boded to within
mile of the top, but ihe vegetation i
scant.
A gentleman from Il ie vicinity of th
mountain passed thro1 Ugh this city yes
terday, and reported that on Sunda,
last smoke and occasional Jets of fam
were issuing from the extreme SUNNI
OF Bald mountain, and that the rumb
ling noises were loud pr and more fire
quent, while the earth around was qua
king continually Tho reliability o
the gentleman could not be ascertained
and so the smoke and flame part of thi
statement may be received cum grdnt
SdliS.
A Jonesboro letter states that mum
Der of prominent citizens of Jonesborc
started for Bald mountain yesterday
with the purpose of being on hand wher
| the eruption begins and bringing home
some Iava-stones as evidences of the
bursting forth of volcanic fires from the
| bald-headed old mountain.
There need be no great surprise il
the commissions of Bald mountain
should be followed lIy an eruption of
molten lava. The pent-up matter with
in the mountain must find vent, and
not till then can it be expected that the
rumbling will cease. The mountains of
Western North Carolina present many
evidences of decided volcanic origin,
though for ages past there has remained
no other trace of activity except that
which is shown by the hot and mineral
springs of this region.
New York Herald, March II.
Tho electric wires have, perhaps,
never flashed more startling tidings of
physical convulsion than the announce
ment that a volcanic eruption was i'm
mirent in the mountains of North Car
olina. No geologist of the present
century has ever ventured, we believe,
to predict that the Appalachian chain,
at our own doors, would ever again be
disturbed by throes with which, in the
so-called prehistoric epoch, they we're
supposed to have been convulsed. The
intelligence as now conveyed to us re-
veals a terrestrial dist rbance which, sc
far as we know, has no parallel on this
continent during the historic period.
The historic accounts of American vol
canoes are confined to tho 'Restern coast
of the continent lying ON that belt of
fire which stretches from the Patago-
nian and Chilian Andes, through the
isthmian mountains, far away to the
northwestward, along the fog-shrouded
shores of British Columbia. We are
told by Hayden that, in remote geo.
logical period, the entire country
drained by the Yellowstone and Colum-
bia rivers was the scene of volcanic ac-
tivity as fierce as that of any portion of
the globe, and that-it formed one vast
crater made up of thousand smaller
volcanic vents and assures, out of
which the fluid rock was hurled in IN
limited quantities. We know that
Mounts Doane, Langford, Stevenson
and more than hundred others were
the nuclei of cyclopean fires that rivaled
many on the shores of the Mediterran-
can. Humboldt has recorded the al
in 1859, when on the night of Septem-
ber %, between the setting and the
rising of the sun, the volcanic cone of
Jorullo rose in fiery splendor sixteen |
hundred and eighty-three feet above the |
plain. In the middle of August, 1868, |
when the Pacific ocean came rushing |
into the port of Valparaiso, many of us
remember how its shock, responsive to
the deep upheavals of the Pacific coast,
spread terror and dismay in the streets
of San Francisco.
At that time the shaking of the earth
extended far inland in California. The
ground opened, jets of water were
elected from it, many buildings were
and ever since then the jn-
habitants of the land of gold have lived
in constant uneasiness.
All these rockings of the continent
have occurred on the western slopes.
The conclusions which have been trans
mitted from the West Indian and At
lantic earthquakes to the Mississippi
valley have been scarcely perceptible,
and make but little or no impression on
the popular mind. The nearest ap-
proaches to volcanic action in the Mis-
5issippi valley have been the occasional
slight disturbances in the bayous and
of the Lower Mississippi,
which have been traced to the agency
Of the Mexican gulf and its underlying
volcanic furnace. There is no doubt it
IS center of plutonic force, and
Figuier, the eminent French physicist,
las gone so far as to suppose that its
furnace partly accounts for
jhe super-heated waters which emerge
through the Florida pass as the great
Atlantic current.
1t is not impossible there may be
between the volcanic center
md the foundations of the Allegheny
peaks, from one of which, in West
,rn North Carolina. the present erup-
ion is reported. The Alleghanies form
IN apparently isolated barrier, or rather
series of isolated upheavais, extending
rom Alabama to Maine, with q mean
altitude of two thousand feet. The
5wo brothers, the Rogerses, so eminent
Is American geologists, who most fully
explored them, first pointed out the ex-
fact that they have no cen
raj axis, but consist of a series of con-
rex and concave fexures, giving them
he appearance of SO many colossal in
Mount Mitchell, the
oftiest; and Mount Washington, the
lext in altitude, guard either flank of
he series. The western slope of the
Whole range, running from the Genesee
country of New York to the Mussel !
hoals of the Tennessee river, are !
kirted by a deep underlying bed of /
limestone. This latter fact is signlh- {
ant, and may give clew to the origin !
# the volcanic action in North Carroll I I
IA. If, as Sir Charles Lyell, the high
st geological authority, asserts, volca- {
oes are due to chemical action in the :
,owels of the earth, and not to an
ternal sea of fire, it is not inconceiva- S
lie how such chemical action has cul- a
ainated in the present fiery disturb a
nee in North Carolina, but we anxious 2
Y wait for further Intelligence for the
alta from which to draw satisfactory