The Republican. [volume] (Maryville, Tenn.) 187?-187?, 1874-04-04
AMERICAN VOLCANOES.
The Terrestrial Disszs1 s.ass ia Sofi
Carolina.
Knoxville Press and Herald, March %.

weeks past Bald mountain has rumbled
and growled and shaken the earth for
twenty miles around, until the greatly
alarmed residents of the vicinity have
fled in terror of being the victims of en-.
ragged Vulcan, and of being lost amid
the hot lava which would make OF their
settlements a modern Pompeii.
Bald mountain is in the southwest
err edge of Mcdowell county, Western
North Carolina, sixteen miles due east
of Asheville, aud rises, loftily towering
among the clouds, to the left of Hickory
Nut Hollow. 1t is wooded to within a
mile of the top, but the vegetation il
scant
A gentleman from the vicinity OF the
mountain passed. through this city yes.
terday, and reported that on Sunday
last smoke and occasional jets of flame
we're issuing from the extreme summit
OF Bald mountain, and that the rumb-
ling noises were louder and more FIRE.
quent, while the earth around was qua
king continually. The reliability OF
the gentleman could not be ascertained,
AMI so the smoke and flame part of this
sta ment may be received cum gran,
sails.
A Jonesbor letter states that a mum.
Der of prom uent citizens of Jonesboro
started for Bald mountain yesterday,
with the purpose If being Il hand when
the eruption begins and bringing home
some ava-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 by 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 tidipgs of
physical convulsion than the announce
ment that a volcanic erupti was i'm
mirent in the mountains of North Car.
olina. No geelogist 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 pre- historic epoch, they we're
to have been convulsed. The
intelligence as now conveyed to us re.
veals terrestrial disturbance 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 the western coast
of the continent lying on that belt OF
fire which stretches from the Patago.
MAN and CHILEAN Andes, through the
isthmian mountains, far away to the
northwestward, along the fog-sbrouded
shores of British Columbia. We are
told by Hayden that, in a remote geo
logical period, the entire country
drained by the Yellowstone aud Colum.
bia rivers was the scene of volcanic &C.
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 nm
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
most inconceivable upheaval in Mexico,
in 1859, when on the night of Septem
Der 90, 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
far inland in California. The
ground opened, jets of water were
elected from it, many buildings were
demolished, and ever since then the in
habitants of the land of gold have lived
in constant uneasiness.
All these BOOKINGS 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-
sissippi valley have been the occasional
slight disturbances in the bayous and
esturaries of the Lower Mississippi,
which have been traced to the agency
of the Mexican gulf and its underlying
furnace. There is no doubt it
is a center of plutonic force, and
Figuier, the eminent French physicist,
has gone 80 far as to suppose that its
submarine furnace partly accounts for
The 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
ern North Carolina. the present erup-
on is reported tn, AlleghaniC 8 form
IN apparently isolated barrier, or rather
series of isolated upheavals, extending
from Alabama to Maine, with n mean
altitude of two thousand feet. The
TWO brothers, tho Rogerses, so eminent
as American biologists, who most fully
explored them, first pointed out the OK
fact that they have no Gen.
raj axis, but consist of series of con-
7ex and concave fixtures, 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
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