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THE OCEAN AND A VOLCANO IN STRIFE.

When the torrent of fire precipitated itself into the ocean, the scene assumed a character of terrific and indescribable grandeur. The magnificence of destruction was never more perceptibly displayed than when these antagonistic elements met in deadly strife. The mightiest of earth's magazines of fire poured forth its burning billows to meet the mightiest of ocean's. For two score miles it came, rolling, tumbling, swelling forward-an awful agent of death. Rocks melted like wax in its path; forests crackled and blazed before its fervent heat; the very hills were lifted from their primeval beds, and sank beneath its tide, or were borne onward by its waves; the works of man were to it but as a scroll in the flames; nature shrivelled and trembled before the irresistible flow. Imagine Niagara's stream, above the brink of the falls, with its dashing, whirling, tossing, and eddying rapids, madly raging and hurrying on to their plunge, instantaneously converted into fire, a gory-hued river of fused minerals; the wrecks of creative matter blazing and disappearing beneath its surface; volumes of hissing steam arising; smokes curling upwards from ten thousand vents, which give utterance to as many deep-toned mutterings, and sullen, confined, and ominous clamorings, as if the spirits of fallen demons were struggling against their final doom; gases detonating, and shrieking as they burst from their hot prison-house; the heavens lurid with flame; the atmosphere dark, turgid and oppressive; the horizon murky with vapours, and gleaming with the reflected contest; while cave and hollow, as the hot air swept along their heated walls, threw back the unearthly sounds in a myriad of prolonged echoes. Such was the scene, as the fiery cataract, leaping a precipice of fifty feet, poured its flood upon the ocean. The old line of coast, a mass of compact, indurated lava, whitened, cracked, and fell. The waters recoiled, and sent forth a tempest of spray; they foamed and lashed around and over the melted rock; they boiled with the heat, and the roar of the conflicting agencies grew fiercer and louder. The reports of the exploding gases were distinctly heard twenty-five miles distant. They were likened to discharges of whole broadsides of heavy artillery. Streaks of the intensest light glanced like lightning in all directions; the outskirts of the burning lava as it fell, cooled by the shock, was shivered into millions of fragments, and, borne aloft by strong breezes blowing towards the land, were scattered in scintillating showers far into the country. For three successive weeks the volcano disgorged an uninterrupted burning tide, with scarcely any diminution, into the ocean. On each side, for twenty miles, the sea became heated, and with such rapidity, that, on the second day of the junction, fishes came ashore dead in great numbers at Keaau, fifteen miles distant. Six weeks later, at the base of the hills, the water continued scalding hot, and sent forth steam at every wash of the waves.

Jarve's Scenes in the Sandwich Islands.

A WILD NIGHT AT SEA.

On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggling, ending in a spouting up of foam that whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and hue; constancy in nothing but eternal strife; on, on, on they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howl the winds, and more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon 66 the storm, A ship!" Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look; and round about the vessel, far as the mariners on her decks can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break; and round her surge and roar; and giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled anger. Still she comes onward bravely. And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning on her hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seamen's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below.-DICKENS.

A THUNDER STORM IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS.

An enormous thunder-cloud had lain all day over Ben Wyvis, shrouding its summit in thick darkness, blackening its sides and base, wherever they were beheld from the surrounding country, with masses of deep shadow, and especially flinging down a weight of gloom upon that magnificent glen that bears the same name as the mountain: till now, the afternoon was like twilight, and the voice of all the streams was distinct in the breathlessness of the vast solitary hollow. The inhabitants of all the straths, vales, glens, and dells, round and about the monarch of Scottish mountains, had, during each successive hour, been expecting the roar of thunder and the deluge of rain; but the huge conglomeratior. of lowering clouds would not rend asunder, although it was certain that a calm blue sky could not be restored till all that dreadful assemblage had melted away into torrents, or been driven off by a strong wind from the sea.

All the cattle on the hills and in the hollows stood still or lay down in their fear, the wild deer sought in herds the shelter of the pinecovered cliffs, the raven hushed his hoarse croak in some grim

cavern, and the eagle left the dreadful silence of the upper heavens. Now and then the shepherds looked from their huts, while the shadow of the thunder-cloud deepened the hues of their plaids and tartans, and at every creaking of the heavy branches of the pines or wide-armed oaks in the solitude of their inaccessible birth-place, the hearts of the lonely dwellers quaked, and they lifted up their eyes to see the first wide flash-the disparting of the masses of darkness-and paused to hear the long loud rattle of heaven's artillery, shaking the foundations of the everlasting mountains. But all was yet silent.

The peal came at last, and it seemed as if an earthquake had smote the silence. Not a tree-not a blade of grass moved, but the blow stunned, as it were, the heart of the solid globe. Then was there a low, wild, whispering, wailing voice, as if of many spirits, all joining together from every point of heaven: it died away-and then the rushing of rain was heard through the darkness; and in a few minutes down came all the mountain torrents in their power, and the sides of all the steeps were suddenly sheeted, far and wide, with waterfalls. The element of water was let loose to run its rejoicing race-and that of fire lent in illumination, whether sweeping in floods along the great open straths, or tumbling in cataracts from cliff's overhanging the eagle's eyrie. Great rivers were suddenly flooded, and the little mountain rivulets a few minutes before only silver threads, and in whose fairy basins the minnows played-were now scarcely fordable by the shepherds. It was time for the strongest to take shelter, and none now would have liked to issue from it; for while there was real danger to life and limb in the many raging torrents, and in the lightning's flash, the imagination and the soul themselves were touched with awe in the long-resounding glens, and beneath the savage scowl of the angry sky. It was such a storm as becomes an era among the mountains; and it was felt that before next morning there would be a loss of lives, not only among the beasts that perish, but among human beings overtaken by the wrath of that irresistible tempest. WILSON.

A PRAIRIE ON FIRE.

I was awakened by the increasing violence of the gale. At times it sank into low wailings, and then would swell again, howling and whistling through the trees. I again threw myself upon my pallet of dried grass, but could not sleep. There was something dismal and thrilling in its sound. At times, wild voices seemed shrieking through the woodland. I gazed around in every direction, and sat with my hand on my gun-trigger, for my feelings were so wrought up, that I momentarily expected to see an armed Indian start from behind each bush. At last I rose up and sat by the fire. Suddenly, a swift gust swept through the grove, and whirled off sparks and cinders in every direction. In

an instant fifty little fires shot their forked tongues in the air, and seemed to flicker with a momentary struggle for existence. There was scarcely time to note their birth before they were creeping up in a tall tapering blaze, and leaping lightly along the tops of the scattered clumps of dry grass. In another moment they leaped forward into the prairie, and a waving line of brilliant flame quivered high up in the dark atmosphere.

Another furious blast came rushing along the ravine, and reached the flaming prairie. Myriads and myriads of bright embers were flung wildly in the air: flakes of blazing grass whirled like meteors through the sky. The flame spread into a vast sheet that swept over the prairie, bending forward, illumining the black waste which it had passed, and shedding a red light far down the deep vistas of the forest, though all beyond the blaze was of a pitchy blackness. The roaring flames drowned even the howling of the wind, and rushed on with a race-horse speed. The noise sounded like the roar of a stormy ocean, and the wild tumultuous billows of the flame were tossed about like a sea of fire. Directly in their course, and some distance out in the prairie, stood a large grove of oaksthe dry leaves still clinging to the branches. There was a red glare thrown upon them from the blazing flood. A moment passed, and a black smoke oozed from the nearest tree-the blaze roared among their branches, and shot up for one hundred feet in the air, waving as if in triumph. The effect was transient. In a moment had the fire swept through a grove covering several acres. It sank again into the prairie, leaving the limbs of every tree scathed and scorched to an inky blackness, and shining with a bright crimson light between their branches. In this way the conflagration swept over the landscape and every hill seemed to burn its own funeral pyre.

For several hours the blaze continued to rage, and the whole horizon became girdled with a belt of living fire. As the circle extended, the flames appeared smaller and smaller, until they looked like a slight golden thread drawn around the hills. They then must have been ten miles distant. At length the blaze disappeared, although the purple light, that for hours illumined the night sky, told that the element was extending into other regions of the prairies.

It was sunrise when I rose from my resting-place and resumed my journey. What a change! All was waste. The sun had set upon a prairie still clothed in its natural garb of herbage. It rose upon a scene of desolation. Not a single weed-not a blade of grass was left. The tall grove, which at sun-set was covered with withered foliage, now spread a labyrinth of scorched and naked branches-the very type of ruin. The wind was still raging; cinders and ashes were drifting and whirling about in almost suffocating clouds; sometimes rendering it impossible to see for more than one or two hundred yards.-AUDUBON.

ness.

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

The True is the Beautiful; and whenever this becomes evident to our senses, its influences are of a soul-elevating character. The Philosopher and the Poet, who are the high-priests of Truth and Beauty, may return to dust, and their names may fade in the lapse of time,-like planets blotted out of heaven;-but the truths they have revealed to man burn on for ever in unextinguishable brightIn the teachings of science we find the elements of the most exalted Poetry;-in the aspect of visible nature-with its innumerable diversities of form and colour-we trace the Beautiful;and in the ceaseless operations of the resistless forces in nature we discover the Sublime. The form and colour of a flower may excite our admiration; but when we examine its physiological structure, -the chemical actions by which its woody fibre and juices are produced, and the laws by which the white sun-beam is thrown back from its surface in coloured rays-we become deeply astonished at the perfection of the processes, and full of reverence for the Great Designer. There are, indeed, tongues in trees," but science alone can interpret their mysterious whispers, and in this consists its Poetry.

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Truth is, in truth, "stranger than fiction." We tremble when the thunder-cloud bursts in fury above our heads; but is there anything less wonderful in the well-authenticated fact, that the dew-drop which glistens in the flower, or the tear that trembles on the eye-lid, holds locked in its transparent cells an amount of electric fire equal to that which is discharged from a thunder-cloud during a storm?

Lifting our searching gaze into the measureless space beyond the earth, we find planet bound to planet, and system chained to system, all impelled by a universal force to roll in regularity and order round a common centre. The glorious sun by day, the moon and stars in the silence and mystery of night, are felt to influence all nature, holding the great earth bound in a manystranded cord which cannot be broken. The tidal flow of the vast ocean with its variety of animal and vegetable life;-the atmosphere, bright with light, obscured by the storm-cloud, spanned by the rainbow, or rent by the explosions of electric fire,-attest to the might of these elementary bonds.

As world is balanced against world in the universe, so in the human fabric, in the vegetable structure, in the crystallized gem or the huge and rugged rock, force is weighed against force, and the balance hangs in tranquillity. Let but a slight disturbance occasion a trifling vibration of the beam, and electricity shakes the stoutest heart with terror at the might of its devastating power. The earth trembles with volcanic strugglings, and the hardest rocks are melted by the intensest heat.

Let one atom be removed from a mass, and its character is changed;-let one force become more active than another, and the body under its influence ceases to be the same. An indissoluble bond unites all the worlds;—and the grain of sand which lies the

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