when the laws of Nature differed from those established in their own time, they will scarcely hesitate to refer the wonderful monuments in question to those primeval ages. When they consider the numerous proofs of reiterated catastrophes to which the region was subject, they may, perhaps, commiserate the unhappy fate of beings condemned to inhabit a planet during its nascent and chaotic state, and feel grateful that their favoured race has escaped such scenes of anarchy and misrule.

Yet what was the real condition of Campania during those years of dire convulsion? "A climate where heaven's breath smells sweet and wooingly-a vigorous and luxuriant nature unparalleled in its productions -a coast which was once the fairy land of poets, and the favourite retreat of great men. Even the tyrants of the creation loved this alluring region, spared it, adorned it, lived in it, died in it."* The inhabitants, indeed, have enjoyed no immunity from the calamities which are the lot of mankind; but the principal evils which they have suffered must be attributed to moral, not to physical, causes-to disastrous events over which man might have exercised a control, rather than to the inevitable catastrophes which result from subterranean agency. When Spartacus encamped his army of 10,000 gladiators in the old extinct crater of Vesuvius, the volcano was more justly a subject of terror to Campania, than it has ever been since the rekindling of its fires.

CHAPTER XII.

ETNA-SKAPTAR JOKUL-JORULLO.

External physiognomy of Etna-Lateral cones-Their successive obliteration-Early eruptions of Etna-Monti Rossi in 1669-Great Fissure of S. Lio-Towns overflowed by lava-Part of Catania destroyed (p. 336.)—Mode of advance of a current of lava-Excavation of a church under lava-Subterranean caverns-Linear direction of cones formed in 1811 and 1819-Flood produced in 1755 by the melting of snow during an eruption-A glacier covered by lava on Etna-Volcanic eruptions in Iceland (p. 341.)-New island thrown up in 1783-Lava currents of Skaptár Jokul in same year-Their immense volume-Eruption of Jorullo in Mexico (p. 345.)-Humboldt's Theory of the convexity of the Plain of Malpais.

External physiognomy of the cone.-HAVING entered into a detailed historical account of the changes in the volcanic district round Naples, I

shall allude in a more cursory manner to some of the circumstances of principal interest in the history of other volcanic mountains. After Vesuvius, our most authentic records relate to Etna, which rises near the sea in solitary grandeur to the height of nearly 11,000 feet,* the mass being chiefly composed of volcanic matter ejected above the surface of the water. The base of the cone is almost circular, and eighty-seven English miles in circumference; but if we include the whole district over which its lavas extend, the circuit is probably twice that extent.

Divided into three regions.-The cone is divided by nature into three distinct zones, called the fertile, the woody, and the desert regions. The first of these, comprising the delightful country around the skirts of the mountain, is well cultivated, thickly inhabited, and covered with olives, vines, corn, fruit trees, and aromatic herbs. Higher up, the woody region encircles the mountain-an extensive forest, six or seven miles in width, affording pasturage for numerous flocks. The trees are of various species, the chestnut, oak, and pine being most luxuriant; while in some tracts are groves of cork and beech. Above the forest is the desert region, a waste of black lava and scoriæ; where, on a kind of plain, rises the cone to the height of about 1100 feet, from which sulphureous vapours are continually evolved. The most grand and original feature in the physiognomy of Etna is the multitude of minor cones which are distributed over its flanks, and which are most abundant in the woody region. These, although they appear but trifling irregularities when viewed from a distance as subordinate parts of so imposing and colossal a mountain, would, nevertheless, be deemed hills of considerable altitude in almost any other region.

Cones produced by lateral eruptions.-Without enumerating numerous monticules of ashes thrown out at different points, there are about eighty of these secondary volcanos, of considerable dimensions; fifty-two on the west and north, and twenty-seven on the east side of Etna. One of the largest, called Monte Minardo, near Bronte, is upwards of 700 feet in height, and a double hill near Nicolosi, called Monti Rossi, formed in 1669, is 450 feet high, and the base two miles in circumference: so that it somewhat exceeds in size Monte Nuovo, before described. Yet it ranks only as a cone of the second magnitude, amongst those produced by the lateral eruptions of Etna. On looking down from the lower bor

* In 1815, Captain Smyth ascertained, trigonometrically, that the height of Etna was 10,874 feet. The Catanians, disappointed that their mountain had lost nearly 2000 feet of the height assigned to it by Recupero, refused to acquiesce in the decision. Afterwards, in 1824, Sir J. Herschel, not being aware of Captain Smyth's conclusions, determined, by careful barometrical measurement, that the height was 10,872 feet. This singular agreement of results so differently obtained was spoken of by Herschel as "a happy accident;" but Dr. Wollaston remarked that "it was one of those accidents which would not have happened to two fools."

ders of the desert region, these volcanos present us with one of the most delightful and characteristic scenes in Europe. They afford every variety of height and size, and are arranged in beautiful and picturesque groups. However uniform they may appear when seen from the sea, or the plains below, nothing can be more diversified than their shape when we look from above into their craters, one side of which is generally broken down. There are, indeed, few objects in nature more picturesque than a wooded volcanic crater. The cones situated in the higher parts of the forest zone are chiefly clothed with lofty pines; while those at a lower elevation are adorned with chestnuts, oaks, beech, and holm.

Successive obliteration of these cones.-The history of the eruptions of Etna, imperfect and interrupted as it is, affords, nevertheless, a full insight into the manner in which the whole mountain has successively attained its present magnitude and internal structure. The principal cone has more than once fallen in and been reproduced. In 1444 it was 320 feet high, and fell in after the earthquakes of 1537. In the year 1693, when a violent earthquake shook the whole of Sicily and killed 60,000 persons, the cone lost so much of its height, says Boccone, that it could not be seen from several places in Valdemone, from which it was before visible. The greater number of eruptions happen either from the great crater, or from lateral openings in the desert region. When hills are thrown up in the middle zone, and project beyond the general level, they gradually lose their height during subsequent eruptions; for when lava runs down from the upper parts of the mountain, and encounters any of these hills, the stream is divided, and flows round them so as to elevate the gently sloping grounds from which they rise. In this manner a deduction is often made at once of twenty or thirty feet, or even more, from their height. Thus, one of the minor cones, called Monte Peluso, was diminished in altitude by a great lava stream which encircled it in 1444; and another current has recently taken the same course-yet this hill still remains four or five hundred feet high.

There is a cone called Monte Nucilla, near Nicolosi, round the base of which several successive currents have flowed, and showers of ashes have fallen, since the time of history, till at last, during an eruption in 1536, the surrounding plain was so raised, that the top of the cone alone was left projecting above the general level. Monte Nero, situated above the Grotta dell' Capre, was in 1766 almost submerged by a current; and Monte Capreolo afforded, in the year 1669, a curious example of one of the last stages of obliteration: for a lava stream, descending on a high ridge which had been built up by the continued superposition of successive lavas, flowed directly into the crater, and nearly filled it. The lava, therefore, of each new lateral cone tends to detract from the relative height of lower cones above their base; so that the flanks of Etna, sloping with a gentle inclination, envelope in succession a great multitude

of minor volcanos, while new ones spring up from time to time; and this has given to the older parts of the mountain, as seen in some sections, 2000 or 3000 feet perpendicular, a complex and highly interesting internal

structure.

Early eruptions of Etna.-Etna appears to have been in activity from the earliest times of tradition; for Diodorus Siculus mentions an eruption which caused a district to be deserted by the Sicani before the Trojan war. Thucydides informs us, that in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, or in the spring of the year 425 B. C., a lava stream ravaged the environs of Catania, and this, he says, was the third eruption which had happened in Sicily since the colonization of that island by the Greeks.* The second of the three eruptions alluded to by the historian took place in the year 475 B. C., and was that so poetically described by Pindar, two years afterwards, in his first Pythian ode :—

Δ' ουρανια συνέχει
Νιφόεσσ' Αίτνα, πανετες

Χιονος όξειας τιθηνα·

In these and the seven verses which follow, a graphic description is given of Etna, such as it appeared five centuries before the Christian era, and such as it has been seen when in eruption in modern times. The poet is only making a passing allusion to the Sicilian volcano, as the mountain under which Typhous lay buried, yet by a few touches of his master hand every striking feature of the scene has been faithfully portrayed. We are told of "the snowy Etna, the pillar of heaven,-the nurse of everlasting frost, in whose deep caverns lie concealed the fountains of unapproachable fire-a stream of eddying smoke by day-a bright and ruddy flame by night; and burning rocks rolled down with loud uproar into the sea."

Two

Eruption of 1669-Monti Rossi formed.-The great eruption which happened in the year 1669 is the first which claims particular attention. An earthquake had levelled to the ground all the houses in Nicolosi, a town situated near the lower margin of the woody region, about twenty miles from the summit of Etna, and ten from the sea at Catania. gulfs then opened near that town, from whence sand and scoriæ were thrown up in such quantity, that, in the course of three or four months, a double cone was formed, called Monti Rossi, about 450 feet high. But the most extraordinary phenomenon occurred at the commencement of the convulsion in the plain of S. Lio. A fissure six feet broad, and of unknown depth, opened with a loud crash, and ran in a somewhat tor tuous course to within a mile of the summit of Etna. Its direction was

* Book iii., at the end.

Minor cones on the flanks of Etna.

1. Monti Rossi, near Nicolosi, formed in 1669.
2. Vampeluso?*

from north to south, and its length twelve miles. It emitted a most vivid light. Five other parallel fissures of considerable length afterwards opened one after the other, and emitted smoke, and gave out bellowing sounds which were heard at the distance of forty miles. This case seems to present the geologist with an illustration of the manner in which those continuous dikes of vertical porphyry were formed which are seen to traverse some of the older lavas of Etna; for the light emitted from the great rent of S. Lio appears to indicate that the fissure was filled to a certain height with incandescent lava probably to the height of an orifice not far distant from Monti Rossi, which at that time opened and poured out a lava current. When the melted matter in such a rent has cooled, it must become a solid wall or dike, intersecting the older rocks of which the mountain is composed.

The lava current above alluded to soon reached in its course a minor cone called Mompiliere, at the base of which it entered a subterranean grotto, communicating with a suite of those caverns which are so common in the lavas of Etna. Here it appears to have melted down some of the vaulted foundations of the hill, so that the whole of that cone became slightly depressed and traversed by numerous open fissures.

Part of Catania destroyed.-The lava, after overflowing fourteen towns and villages, some having a population of between 3000 and 4000 inhabitants, arrived at length at the walls of Catania. These had been purposely raised to protect the city; but the burning flood accumulated till it rose to the top of the rampart, which was sixty feet in height, and then it fell in a fiery cascade and overwhelmed part of the city. The

The hill which I have here introduced was called by my guide Vampolara, but the name given in the text is the nearest to this which I find in Gemmellaro's Catalogue of Minor Cones.