610 



ERUPTION OF MONTE NUOVO. 



[Ch. XXIV, 



many 



by it. Now this eruption lasted two nights and two days 

 without intermission, though, it is true, not always with the 

 same force ; the third day the eruption ceased, and I went 

 up with many people to the top of the new hill, and saw 

 down into its mouth, which was a round cavity about a 

 quarter of a mile in circumference, in the middle of which, 



tones which had fallen were boiling up, just as a caldron 

 of water boils on the fire. The fourth day it began to throw 

 up again, and the seventh much 

 violence than the first night. A 



who were on the hill were knocked down by the stones and 

 killpd or smothered with the smoke. In the day the smoke 



the s 



more 



still with less 



time 



midst 



the night-time.' * 



It will be seen that both these accounts, written imme- 

 diately after the birth of Monte Nuovo, agree in stating that 

 the sea retired ; and one mentions that its bottom was up- 

 raised ; but they attribute the origin of the new hill exclu- 

 sively to the jets of mud, showers of scoriae, and large frag- 

 ments of rock, cast out from a central orifice, for several 

 days and nights. Baron Yon Buch, however, in his excellent 

 work on the Canary Islands, and volcanic phenomena in 

 general, has declared his opinion that the cone and crater of 

 Monte Nuovo were formed, not in the manner above de- 

 scribed, but by the upheaval of solid beds of white tuff, 

 which were previously horizontal, but which were pushed up 

 in 1538, so as to dip away in all directions from the centre, 

 with the same inclination as the sloping surface of the cone 

 itself. ' It is an error,' he says, 

 was formed by eruption, or by the ejection of pumice, scoria?, 

 and other incoherent matter ; for the solid beds of upraised 

 tuff are visible all round the crater, and it is merely the 

 superficial covering of the cone which is made up of ejected 

 scoriae.' f 



In confirmation of this view, M. Dufrenoy has cited a pas- 

 sage from the works of Porzio, a celebrated physician of that 



to imagine that this hill 









0* 



„- 









V 





■-«• 



: 



-••■ 



• 



\. 







a 





] 







mi 



i 



% 







* Cainpi Phlegrsei, p. 77. 



f P. 317. Paris, 1S36 



