ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 29 



(38.) The next volcano I shall introduce is ^Etna, the 

 grandest of all our European volcanos. I ascended it in 

 1824, and found its height by a very careful barometric 

 measurement to be 10,772 feet above the sea, which, by 

 the way, agrees within some eight or ten feet with 

 Admiral Smyth's measurement. 



(39.) The scenery of ^Etna is on the grandest scale. 

 Ascending from Catania you skirt the stream of lava 

 which destroyed a large part of that city in 1669, and 

 which ran into the sea, forming a jetty or breakwater 

 that now gives Catania what it never had before, the 

 advantage of a harbour. There it lies as hard, rugged, 

 barren, and fresh-looking as if it had flowed but yester- 

 day. In many places it is full of huge caverns ; great 

 air-bubbles, into which one may ride on horseback (at 

 least large enough) and which communicate, in a suc- 

 cession of horrible vaults, where one might wander and 

 lose one's self without hope of escape. Higher up, near 

 Nicolosi, is the spot from which that lava flowed. It is 

 marked by two volcanic cones, each of them a consider- 

 able mountain, called the Monti Rossi, rising 300 feet 

 above the slope of the hill, and which were thrown up 

 on that occasion. Indeed, one of the most remarkable 

 features of ^Etna is that of its flanks bristling over with 

 innumerable smaller volcanos. For the height is so 

 great that the lava now scarcely ever rises to the top of 

 the crater; for before that, its immense weight breaks 

 through at the sides. In one of the eruptions that hap- 

 pened in the early part of this century, I forget the date, 

 but I think it was in 1819, and which was described to 



