

606 



HISTORY OF VESUVIUS AFTER 1138. 



[Ch. XXIV. 



contains. Its surface is almost as sterile, after a period of 

 five centuries, as if it had cooled down yesterday. A few 



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me 



plants, alone appear in the interstices of the scoriae, while 

 the Vesuvian lava of 1767 is already covered with a luxuriant 

 vegetation. Pontanus, whose country-house was burnt and 

 overwhelmed, describes the dreadful scene as having lasted 

 two months.* Many houses were swallowed up, and a par- 

 tial emigration of the inhabitants followed. This eruption 

 produced no cone, but only a slight depression, hardly de- 

 serving the name of a crater, where heaps of black and red 

 scorise lie scattered around. Until this eruption, Ischia is 

 generally believed to have enjoyed an interval of rest for 

 about seventeen centuries ; but Julius Obsequens,f who flou- 

 rished a.d. 214, refers to some volcanic convulsions in the 

 year 662 after the building of Rome (91 B.C.). As Pliny, 

 who lived a century before Obsequens, does not enumerate 

 this 



among 



other volcanic eruptions, the story has been 



m 



commotions 



To return to Yesuvius : 



History of Vesuvius after 1138.— 

 the next eruption occurred in 1306 ; between which era and 

 1631 there was only one other (in 1500), and that a slight 

 one. It has been remarked, that throughout this period 

 Etna was in a state of such unusual activity, as to lend coun- 

 tenance to the idea that the great Sicilian volcano may 

 sometimes serve as a channel of discharge to elastic fluids 

 and lava that would otherwise rise to the vents in Campania. 



sufficient 



may 



accidental and exceptional. Where vol 

 tinctly arranged in a linear series, the subterranean connec- 

 tion of different portions of the line may be speculated upon 

 more freely. 



Formation of Monte Nuovo, 1538.— The great pause was 

 also marked by a memorable event in the Phlegmean Fields 

 —the sudden formation of a new mountain in 1 538, of whicli 



* Lib. vi. de B^llo Neap, in Grsevii Thesaur. 

 t Prodig. libel, c. cxiv. 





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