618 



MODERN ERUPTIONS OE VESUVIUS. 



[Ch. XXIV. 



as the stranger is to determine, by their physical features 

 alone, the distinct ages of Monte Nuovo, Monte Barbaro, 

 Astroni, and the Solfatara. 



The vast scale and violence of the volcanic operations in 

 Campania, in the olden time, has been a theme of decla- 

 mation, and has been contrasted with the comparative state 

 of quiescence of this delightful region in the modern era. 



Instead of inferring, from analogy, that the ancient Vesuvius 

 was always at rest when the craters of the Phlegreean Fields 



were burning 1 — that each cone rose in succession, — and that 



many years and often centuries, of repose intervened between 

 different eruptions, — geologists seem to have generally con- 



jectured that the whole group sprung up from the ground 



t once, like the soldiers of Cadmus when he sowed the 



i teeth. As well might they endeavour to persuade 



dragon's 



us that on these Phlegrsean Fields, as the poets feigned, 

 the giants warred with Jove, ere yet the puny race of mortals 

 were in being. 



Modern eruptions of Vesuvius. — For nearly a century after 

 the birth of Monte Nuovo, Vesuvius continued in a state of 

 tranquillity. There had then been no violent eruption for 

 492 years ; and it appears that the crater was then exactly 

 in the condition of the present extinct volcano of Astroni, 

 near Naples. Bracini, who visited Vesuvius not long before 

 the eruption of 1631, gives the following interesting descrip- 

 tion of the interior : — ' The crater was five miles in circum- 

 ference, and about a thousand paces deep : its sides were 

 covered with brushwood, and at the bottom there was a plain 

 on which cattle grazed. In the woody parts wild boars fre- 

 quently harboured. In one part of the plain, covered with 

 ashes, were three small pools, one filled with hot and bitter 

 water, another Salter than the sea, and a third hot, but taste- 

 less.'* But at length these forests and grassy plains were 

 consumed, being suddenly blown into the air, and their ashes 

 scattered to the winds. In December, 1631, seven streams 

 of lava poured at once from the crater, and overflowed several 

 villages on the flanks and at the foot of the mountain. 



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* Hamilton's Campi Plilegrsei, folio, vol. i. p. 62; and Brieslak, Campanie, 

 tome i. p. 186. 



