104 KAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



felt the impossibility of describing. The lava, which 

 was cooled at its base by contact with the water, 

 presented a perpendicular wall of about 1500 

 yards in extent, and thirty or forty feet in height. 

 As it slowly advanced, it carried with it, like so many 

 blocks of ice, enormous solidified masses, which were 

 still red-hot. On reaching the extremity of this 

 moving causeway these blocks fell into the sea, and 

 gradually drove back the waves in proportion as the 

 fluid mass advanced. At the point of contact 

 between the two elements, enormous masses of 

 water were converted into vapour, which rising with 

 a horrible whistling sound, hid the sun behind a 

 thick mass of clouds, and then fell in salt rain over 

 the neighbouring country. In the course of a few 

 days the lava had caused the coast line to advance 

 some 900 feet further into the sea. 



New affluents continued to increase the burning 

 stream, whose current after being incessantly widened, 

 at last reached the ramparts of Catania. Day by 

 day the stream rose higher and higher, until it was 

 even with the top of the walls, which no longer able 

 to support this enormous pressure, gave way on the 

 30th of April for a space of about 120 feet, and the 

 lava at once entered by the breach which had been 

 thus made. 



The part of the town that had been broken in was 

 the highest, and Catania now seemed doomed to 

 total destruction, when it was saved by the energy 

 of three men who ventured to contend with the force 

 of the volcano. Doctor Saverio Musmeci and the 

 painter Giacinto Platania, conceived the idea of 



