14 Remarks on Mount Vesuvius. 



ble time in collecting the finest specimens we could obtain of 

 the above mentioned minerals. We then retraced our steps in 

 this descent, which proved considerably laborious, and after 

 gaining the top visited a crevice a little way down on the 

 outside of the cone, opened within the last forty days, which, 

 though about one finger broad, and not much longer, admits 

 a current of air so tremendously heated, that, on laying a 

 bunch of ferns quite wet with the morning^s rain upon it, 

 they speedily were in a blaze. Resuming the edge on the 

 summit, we returned the way we came to the top of the de- 

 scending path, and on our way saw the sun set in a very 

 splendid manner, illuminating the distant islands of Ischia 

 and Procida, the point of Misenum, and the bay of Baiae, M'ith 

 his last rays. Having eaten our eggs, we descended the cone ; 

 being rather dark I made no particular haste ; but on a form- 

 er occasion I went down the cone with great satisfaction in 

 four minutes. Had there been fewer stones I could easily have 

 gone quicker. We left the top about half-past five, and hav- 

 ing taken our cold dinner at the hermitage, we .descended to 

 Resina by torch light, and reached Naples safely at half-past 

 eight o'clock. 



Before 1822 the mountain was 4250 feet high ; but in the 

 tremendous eruption of that year above 800 feet of the cone 

 were thrown completely off, and landed in the sea. The ascent 

 is therefore now much shorter, and the figure of the hill 

 entirely changed. Formerly the crater was only 5600 feet, or 

 little more than a mile in circumference, and comparatively 

 shallow, but now it is three miles and a third round, and 

 1500 feet deep from the lowest, 2000 from the highest part 

 of the summit. I descended to within 500 feet of the bottom. 

 As much interest was excited in ourselves and other visitors, 

 by the prospect of a speedy eruption which was very generally 

 expected, I was at pains to hear the opinion of our much ex- 

 perienced and very intelligent guide Salvatore. The sub- 

 stance of his information was, that the present crater being so 

 very deep, and the new hole opened being in the hottom of it, 

 he conceives it impossible that lava can ever come over the 

 edge, and does not think that the mountain can have force 



