Geological researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, during the years 1862-1865.
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CHINA, MONGOLIA, AND JAPAN. 83 The view in the distance is grand. On our left the shore of the beautiful Volcano bay forms a long, sweeping curve, parallel to which the mountains in the background, covered with dense forests, appear in all the shades of green, blue, and purple, as they stretch away on the far horizon. Far over the bay, rising as it were from the sea, are several beautiful cones, long quiet, covered to the summits with vegetation, while nearer, though seemingly among them, is the semi-active Usu, a ruined cone whose yellow, sulphur-coated cliffs glisten even at this distance. We descended into the crater by a talus of pumice, and crossing to the north side came to the edge of a secondary crater, or pit, in the plain. This was about 600 feet in diameter, with precipitous sides on which the stratification of the mass of pumice that fills the bottom of the great crater is distinctly visible. From the bottom and sides of this pit columns of steam were rising, incrusting the walls with crystals of sulphur and salts. This inner crater must have been formed after the falling in of the cone, and was, perhaps, the point of exit of the ashes that fell after the breaking in of the peak. On examining the long fissures that traverse the plain, their sides were found incrusted with delicate crystals of sulphur and sulphate salts, while the pumice walls were half turned to a bright red clay, impregnated with these crystals. Putting my thermometer, which was graduated only to 800 C., into the steam, the mercury instantly ran up to that point. The recent covering of pumice conceals, in most places, the true structure of the mountain, as it forms a deep mantle-over every slope not too steep to retain it. This product is grayish-white, very irregular in its porous structure, and contains numerous crystals of felspar and grains of a translucent, greenish glass. It is undergoing rapid disintegration. Bombs of black scoria were found containing crystals of white felspar, and showing transition, in streaks, into pumice characterized by the same contents as that just described. Blocks of a grayish trachytic lava, abounding in crystals of triclinic felspar and grains of the greenish glass, mentioned above, occur in the crater, and seem to be the rock of which the pumice and bombs are a variety. The western side of the crater wall is the highest, and owes its better preservation to a broad dyke of rock consisting mainly of a dark paste with greenish-white crystals of triclinic felspar, hornblende, and magnetic iron. The dyke has a tabular structure, the plates being upright in the middle and horizontal on the sides, forming there a right angle with the cooling surface, as is the case with columnar structure. The rock traversed by this dyke was found very much disintegrated. Without visiting the top of the northern wall we could clearly distinguish the original outer mantle of the volcano, in the exposed edges of different colored strata, bably the old cone remained. The greater part of at least the western and northern walls appear to be of trachytic rock. The general appearance of this mountain produced upon me the impression that it had, before this, been a ruined cone, but was rebuilt by an eruption of pumice to be again broken down and given over to the levelling solfatara-action. Descending by the same route we returned to Skunope.
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About this Item
- Title
- Geological researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, during the years 1862-1865.
- Author
- Pumpelly, Raphael, 1837-1923.
- Canvas
- Page 95
- Publication
- [Washington,: Smithsonian institution,
- 1866]
- Subject terms
- Geology -- China
- Geology -- Mongolia.
- Geology -- Japan.
Technical Details
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- Making of America Books
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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ahe8439.0001.001
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- Full citation
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"Geological researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, during the years 1862-1865." In the digital collection Making of America Books. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ahe8439.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 29, 2025.