Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/55

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VOLCANOES, THEIR ACTION AND DISTRIBUTION.
45

non to be no longer visible. The resemblance presented by Stromboli to a 'flashing-light' on a most gigantic scale is very striking, and the mountain has long been known as the 'lighthouse of the Mediterranean.'"

The island appears, if we land upon it, to be entirely built up of such materials as we know to be ejected from volcanoes; "indeed, it

Fig. 1.—Stromboli, viewed from the Northwest, April, 1874.

resembles, on a gigantic scale, the surroundings of an iron-furnace, with its heaps of cinders and masses of slag. The irregularity in the form of the island is at once seen to be due to the action of the wind, the rain, and the waves of the surrounding sea, which have removed the loose, cindery materials at some points, and left the hard, slaggy masses standing up prominently at others." This pile stands in a sea