Mr Simond on the Eruptions of Mount JEtna. 311 



every one of these convulsions of ^tna, was completely over- 

 turned or burnt down, and its inhabitants wholly or in part 

 swallowed up, once in the twelfth century, and twice in the 

 seventeenth.* 



But during the memorable earthquake of 1783, which shook 

 five hundred miles of country in a straight line through Sicily 

 and Calabria, spreading over all Italy and a great part of Eu- 

 rope a fixed haze, which for many months neither wind nor 

 rain could dispel, Catania suffered less in proportion than Mes- 

 sina. I have heard living witnesses describe the heaving up 

 and down of the earth during that memorable earthquake, as 

 resembling the motion of a carpet when the wind gets between 

 it and the floor, and as a sort of undulation producing sea-sick- 

 ness. The walls of buildings were not only thrown out of the 

 perpendicular, but so shaken as to lean different ways at the 

 same time, become totally disjointed, and fall to pieces. In 

 the sylvan region of ^Etna trees were seen bowing to one ano- 

 ther, and the phenomena was attended with tremendous inter- 

 nal noises — rimbombi e mugghiti, as the Italian language finely 

 expresses it, — and with occasional explosions as if the earth 

 were breaking open : in fact, it did break open in many parts of 

 Calabria, swallowing up villages and towns with all their inha- 

 bitants. The singular haze just mentioned might possibly 

 have issued from those openings ; meantime the great spiraglio 

 (loop-hole or vent-hole) of ^Etna (the crater at top,) remained 

 closed, — a fact which may serve to account for the violence of 

 the earthquakes. 



It appears that more than one-third of these eruptions (fif- 

 teen out of forty-one,) took place in the months of February 

 and March ; a circumstance not unworthy of notice, for that 

 period of the year is just after the rains of January ; and it 

 may be inferred, that rain water penetrating into the heart of 

 the mountain, whence so very few springs are known to issue, 

 serves to kindle its fires. Yet rain on the upper regions of 

 JEtna is in winter always snow, and the rains on its base can 

 alone penetrate; thence we may conclude the local place of the 

 firewhichrain water has an agency in kindlingtobevery low down. 



* The last time (1693), at the moment when the houses of Catania were 

 falling down and burying 18,000 people under their ruins, a tremendous 

 eruption put a stop to the earthquake which had lasted some days, and 

 was gradually increasing ; — the summit of the mountain fell in. 



