No. VII. — Islands of Procida, and I schia. 327 



account, — the Prochyta and Inarime, or Pithecusa of the an- 

 cients, — the Procida and Ischia of modern times. The nature 

 of the soil on the corresponding coasts, as the scoglie delle pietre 

 arse already described, with the conterminous point of Proci- 

 da, and the little island of Vivara interposed between it and 

 Ischia, bespeak at least a connection in the submarine land, 

 whether or not we may be disposed to admit with Strabo, 

 that the disseveration was accomplished by a natural convul- 

 sion within the memory of man. We may therefore consider 

 Ischia, which is farthest from the shore, as the true western 

 extremity of the Bay, the entire opening of which, between 

 this island and the promontory of Minerva, has a stretch of 

 about thirty miles. The islands of Procida and Ischia had a 

 pre-eminence as to volcanic energy in ancient times, which they 

 now want, the latter having been subject to violent earth- 

 quakes, and even volcanic explosions, long before the first re- 

 corded eruption of Vesuvius, so as to have gained the charac- 

 ter of imprisoning the Typhon of the Greeks, that mysterious 

 being represented as " surpassing in size and force all the 

 children of earth, — as taller than the mountains, with the his- 

 sing of snakes from his head. Fire gleamed from his eyes, 

 and he hurled stones to heaven with a loud and hollow noise, 

 while surges of fire boiled up from his mouth.'"'* The island 

 of Prochyta was conceived by some to be the offspring of one 

 of the eruptions of the greater island, — an opinion which its 

 name seems to support, "f But in later times the energies 

 which were spent in this direction found a more permanent 

 vent in the long dormant crater of Vesuvius, and the western 

 side of the bay has only been subjected to rare though violent 

 paroxysms. 



We shall make first a few remarks upon the island of Pro- 

 cida, which, however, presents little to detain us. Notwith- 

 standing the appellation of " Mta''^ which Virgil gives it, this 

 island has in general a flat character. It is the castle alone, 

 which being situated on one considerable eminence at its east- 

 ern extremity, gives it rather a commanding appearance in 



* See Dr Daubeny on the Typhosus of the Greeks in his Lectures on 

 Volcanos. 



t Pliny, Hist. Nat- iii. 6. 



