The Wonder Book of Volcanoes and EarthquakesHouston, Edwin J. (Edwin James)
Science
The Wonder Book of Volcanoes and Earthquakes
Houston, Edwin J. (Edwin James)
Earthquakes; Volcanoes
Aden, on the Red Sea, is the centre of an extensive volcanic district.
Indeed, on both shores of the Red Sea there are a few volcanoes that
are still active, while in Sinai, and in the districts of the south,
there are several extinct craters.
But it is in the New World, especially on the Pacific coast of
North America, that volcanic activity was especially great during
the geological past. There is a district containing volcanic rocks
that extends through various parts of western North America, from
New Mexico and North California, to Oregon and British Columbia.
This district has a width of from eighty to 200 miles, and a length
of not quite 800 miles. This great area of nearly 150,000 square
miles is covered with great sheets of volcanic rocks except where
mountain ranges rise from them, or where the rivers have cut deep
valleys through them. In portions of California and New Mexico these
plateaus rise to heights of from 8,000 to 10,000 feet, while in parts
of Colorado, where they form huge dome-like mountains, they reach a
thickness of 14,000 feet. In Oregon the sheet of lava is 2,000 feet
thick, and, indeed, in some places, is estimated to have a depth of
7,000 feet.
In the opinion of nearly all American geologists these great lava
flows in western North America were not of the type known as crater
eruptions, but were what are called fissure eruptions. Some of them
are believed to have occurred during geological times as early as the
Eocene. Prestwich, however, is of the opinion that the eruptions of
the past in these portions of the world were not confined to fissure
eruptions, but that crater eruptions also occurred; and that it was
towards the close of the Tertiary Age that crater eruptions occurred
with great lava flows. Indeed, as we have seen, in portions of Utah
and the neighborhood the remains of true craters can be found.
Besides the above there are evidences of geological volcanoes of still
older times. In portions of Deccan, in southern Hindostan, there is an
immense plateau formed of trap rock, that extends from east to west
for a distance of 400 miles, and from north to south through from 700
to 800 miles. This district, with an area of almost 200,000 square
miles, is covered with a vast lava sheet. It was, in the opinion of
Prestwich, from whom many of the facts of the geological volcanic
eruptions have been obtained, probably still more extensive. The
plateau of Deccan rises gradually from the east to the west, where, in
some parts of the Ghauts Mountains, it reaches a height of from 4,000
to 5,000 feet.
One of the greatest of these prehistoric volcanoes of Scotland was a
volcano in the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides. This volcano was probably
nearly thirty miles across at its base, and was from 10,000 to 12,000
feet high. It is now only 3,172 feet in height.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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