170 ProK Feirara's Account of the Earthquakes 



volcanos, belch it out in flaming rivers in the midst of the ter- 

 rible pliienomena which they themselves produce*. 



Urged by the passion for observation, I have often descended 

 into the horrid cavity of the crater, and approached near the 

 blazing brink of the new orifices vi^hich have vomited forth 



• T 1 



streams of fire in my own time : I have seen nnmense torrents 

 of aqueous vapour urged from the vast chimney, whose base 

 is lost in the deep furnaces below ; I have been bathed in the 

 water to which the vapour was reduced by the low tempera- 

 ture of the atmosphere into which it entered ; often have I 

 seen it fall in fine showers all around me. Having penetrated 

 into the recesses of the globe, it is in this manner forced out 

 again by the heat to which it is exposed. I have observed 

 the hydrogen gas, one time burning with its peculiar colour, 

 at another, bursting forth with a loud deep explosion ; the 

 sulphuric and muriatic vapours whitening the immense clouds 

 of smoke, and filling all the air with their suffocating breath; 

 or, seizing upon the solid substances around, remaining fixed 

 upon them. Fused substances, forced up by the elastic va- 

 pours, are disgorged from the same mouths, spread about 

 in torrents of fire, and consolidated by the contact of the 

 air. Is it not possible that the seat of these products may 

 be extremely deep, and that yet they may reach the sur- 

 face? Who knows but in other places, those grand labora- 

 tories of nature, from causes which will always elude our in- 

 vestigation, may be so deeply seated, that their productions 

 never arrive at the surface ; and that no other evidences of 

 their existence, no other effects of their action are perceptible, 

 than the shaking of the earth, and the rumblings which the 

 aeriform elastic vapours make in the cavities of the earth +. 



* In my " Description of jEtna," I have proved that the furnaces to this 

 volcano cannot be under the foundation of the mountain, but at various 

 distances from it. The immense vaults, which must have been formed 

 after so many ages of conflagration, would, at the first violent shock, have 

 swallowed up the whole mountain; and the combustible materials would 

 have been exhausted in so small a circumference. The inflamed matter 

 in different situations, from causes established by long usage, flows towards 

 iEtna, and is ejected by it. Seneca {Epis. 79) acknowledged this truth ; 

 " ignem in ipso monte non alimtntuni, sed viam habere." 



\ The deficiency of volcanos in any place ought not to be made an ar- 

 gument against the existence of igneous fermentation .under that place ; 

 since it may be placed at a great depth, or at least not be sufficiently large 

 to form an eruption. And indeed, notwithstanding the numerous volcanos 

 which have burnt at one time or other, in almost every region, may it not 

 be possible that there is still but one great reservoir of fire, the remains of 

 that which in remote ages has burst out in Portugal, Spain, the South of 

 France, Italy, tlie islands of Great Britain, Germany, Bohemia, about the 

 Bosphorus, on the Coasts of Asia, and in many other places? 



Three 



