Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
To th'mighty Burnings, which fierce Nature raises.
If then a Town, or Hills blaze be so dire;
What will be th'last, and Universal Fire?
The Vulcanos: or, Burning and Fire-Vomiting Mountains
, the
first modern account in English of volcanoes across the globe, sets
out the state of knowledge in a pocket-sized volume.¹² Olden-
burg's question to Harpur may have been one attempt to ensure
that the facts in the topic were correct. Its publication was clearly
serendipitously timed, appearing as it did soon after the cata-
strophic eruption of Etna in March 1669. Kircher's worldview was
maintained in the English version, which was liberally extended
from the original by other accounts and amendments:
The Atlantick Sea so abounds with subterraneous Fires,
that Plato's Land, call'd Atlantis, seems to have been swallow'd
up from no other cause, but the outrages of these fires and
earthquakes thence arising . . . Yet no part of the world is
more famous than America, which you may call Vulcan's
Kingdom. In the Andes alone, which they call the Cordillera
from a Concantenation of mountains in the Kingdom of
Chile are fifteen Vulcanos, Terra del Fuego. In Peru not fewer
than in Chile; six of inaccessible height; and three in the
continued tops of the Andes, besides innumerable Vulcanian
Ditches, Pits, and Lakes . . . In the Northern America, are
observed five, partly in new Spain, viz. three, formidable for
their belching flames, partly in new Granada, partly in the
very heart and midst of California, and the more inland
Mexican kingdom.¹³
The topic goes on to describe many other volcanoes all over
the world, including those in Persia, the Asian steppes, Mollucca
(the Spice Islands) and the Philippines, Sumatra, Japan, Tenerife
and St Helena. Following Albertus Magnus, Kircher's central task
for his readers was to try to demonstrate with engravings and text
how volcanoes work:
