This zone of
mountains and valleys is from ten to twenty miles in width, and whilst
in the main its mountains are not more than from half a mile to a mile
high, it contains peaks of five or six miles in height, and there is one
peak which rises nine miles above the sea-level.
"I want you to look particularly at these larger mountain-ranges, one at
the right, the other at the left side of my map--each of which as it
stretches out into the sea divides into two smaller chains. Upon these
ranges, and the comparatively diminutive height of the intervening
mountains, in connection with the fact that there is a constant
wind-current from the lower Pacific (generally speaking, from the west
of longitude 74 W.), depends the habitability of this large island, the
Island of Hili-li (here represented in about longitude 75 E.), and many
other islands which stretch out in the same direction from this enormous
active surface-crater. I say that upon such conditions depends the
habitability of these islands, and so I believe; but there is another
cause for their greater than tropical warmth: If you will glance here on
the right of this map, in the midst of the mountain zone you will see
represented a bay, which, winding among mountains, makes its way very
close to the zone of hot lava--in fact, is divided from it by little
more than the ring of lava-blocks, rock-salt, and animal remains, which
at this point is narrowed to a width of about two miles.
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