Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/731

Rh the bandage is taken off, the foot is kneaded, to make the joints more flexible, and is then bound up again as quickly as possible with a fresh bandage, which is drawn up more tightly. During the first year the pain is so intense that the sufferer can do nothing, and for about two years the foot aches continually, and has to endure besides a pain like the pricking of sharp needles. If the binding is kept up rigorously, the foot in two years becomes dead and ceases to ache, and the whole leg, from the knee downward, becomes shrunken to be little more than skin and bone. When once formed, the "golden lily," as the Chinese lady calls her delicate little foot, can never recover its original shape; and, when uncovered, it is so unsightly that women object to take off their bandages even before members of their own family.

A Volcano rising from a Lake.—M. de Lesseps has communicated some interesting papers on the extraordinary phenomena which accompanied the earthquakes of January last, in the republic of San Salvador, to which the French journals add accounts furnished by the consul of the republic and the French consul in Guatemala. The shocks, which, although of considerable strength, were not violent enough to do harm to houses, seemed to proceed from a center in the Lake of Ilopango or Cojutepeque. The waters of the lake having fallen from an extraordinary level to which they had risen before the shocks began, a small island with three peaks appeared to be rising from the center of the lake. One of the peaks reached a height of about ninety feet above the water, and sent forth a column of smoke and flames of considerable height. An attempt was made to approach the island in a boat, but the waters in contact with the hot rock were boiling, and gave out great jets of vapor. The water around the volcano continued to boil for some time after the eruption was over, and indicated a temperature of 100° at the edges of the lake. The fish were cooked and rose to the surface, and with them many shells and aquatic animals. The lake is in the line of the volcanoes of Central America, where volcanic cones seem to alternate with lakes, and itself occupies the place of an ancient volcano. Its water is brackish, bitter, and almost slimy, and has at times given out bubbles of sulphuretted gas. The rise of the water preceding the eruption agrees curiously with an ancient tradition that earthquakes may be expected whenever the level of the lake is elevated. So fully was this believed that the people were formerly accustomed to dig channels to carry off the superfluous waters; and while they did this they had no earthquakes. These facts have a bearing upon the theory that earthquakes and volcanic phenomena are largely due to the action of water.

Volcanic Eruptions and Earthquakes in 1879.—According to Herr Fuchs, only three volcanic eruptions took place in 1879, none of which were of extraordinary violence. The most notable one was that coincident with the appearance of a new volcano in Lake Ilopango, in San Salvador, following on a series of earthquakes in December. The eruption of Etna, which began on the 26th of May and lasted for eleven days, was especially marked by an uncommonly long lava stream—of sixteen kilometres, or ten miles. The preceding earthquakes were not very strong. The third eruption was that of the volcano Merapi, in Java, on the 28th of March, which was marked by an abundance of lava and ashes. Only a few of the ninety-nine earthquakes which came to the knowledge of Herr Fuchs were of remarkable strength. A violent earthquake was felt in northern Persia for several hours on the night of the 22d of March, and destroyed a number of villages. About nine hundred persons perished between that date and the 2d of April, when the last vibrations occurred. Earthquakes of unusual strength occurred in the Romagna (Italy) on the 25th of April, and in Mexico on the 17th of May. In the latter earthquake the movement of the ground was observed in all the region from Vera Cruz to the capital, and much injury was done in Cordoba and Orizaba. Violent earthquakes began in a part of China on the 29th of June, extended over thirty districts, and the shocks were repeated till the middle of August, with the loss of many hundred lives. These earthquakes were marked by great jets of water spouting up through the opened ground.