The Curious Eruption of Mount Asama, Japan Mount Asama is nearly 8000 feet high, and the crater is nearly a mile across, and has a depth of about 1000 feet. Steam is being continually discharged. The above display was photographed from about 8 miles distance. The discharge was about 1-1/2 miles high, and shot up to that height in some ninety seconds. The evident inference is either that water is being forced out of the rocks by volcanic action, or that the eruptions are of the nature of steam explosions caused by water which comes in contact with molten rock.] A few years later, on the 26th and 27th August, 1896, occurred the remarkable Icelandic earthquake, which affected a triangular plateau, bordered by high mountains, including Mount Hecla and other well-known volcanoes, in the south-western portion of the island. During the shocks the earth's surface was thrown into waves, so that neither man nor cattle could stand. Persons who were lying on the ground near a cliff were by the shock thrown bodily over the edge. A high hill in the plain is described as shaken "like a dog coming out of the water," and a thick mantle of loose soil which had covered it was afterwards found distributed in heaps about its base. The surface of the plain was scarred by open fissures or by rock walls which had been caused by the earth's rising on one side of a fissure. One of the fissures was nine miles and another seven miles in length. The mountains round the plains were riven by clefts, and many landslips occurred. As we have mentioned elsewhere, a new geyser was formed, throwing up water to an enormous height, but soon spending its early force; and many geysers and springs were violently disturbed.