The southwestern portion of Asia, the southern shores of Europe, and the northwestwardly portion of the African mainland, fall within this region on the one side, as the islands of the West Indies do upon the other. The entire breadth of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the circuit of the Mediterranean, is thus included within its limits. To the northward, the numerous volcanoes of Iceland, and the more distant cone of Jan Mayen Island, lying within the Arctic circle, must be regarded as within its area; together with, in an opposite direction, the still-burning peak of the Cameroon Mountains, adjoining the upper extremity of the Gulf of Guinea. The volcanic peaks found within the widely detached groups of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, with Tenerife, in the Canary group, are among its outlying members. Throughout the wide region thus indicated, earthquakes are of frequent occurrence. There are fewer active vents of eruption than in the case of the Pacific circuit. But the cones of Etna and Vesuvius, with the island of Santorin, in the Mediterranean, and the numerous volcanoes of Iceland, attest the destructive violence of the subterranean fires. Western Asia, from the Caspian to the shores of the Archipelago (including Armenia, Syria, and the Lesser Asia), Greece, southern Italy, the Spanish peninsula, and the region of Mount Atlas, in Northwestern Africa, are all liable to the frequent repetition of such convulsions. The only portion of the Mediterranean coasts exempt from such disturbing phenomena is on its southern shores, embracing that part of the North African coast which stretches from the Lesser Syrtis to the valley of the Nile. We have no record of the experience of any shocks of earthquake in Egypt. Had it been otherwise, perhaps the pyramids of that land of wonders might have proved less enduring monuments of the past.