138 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



volcanic pits, crevices emitting sulphurous vapors, till we reach 

 the kingdom and Bea of the two Sicilies, \vh' re a vast coneen- 

 tration of volcanic fire permanently discharges from below 

 smoke, gaseous vapors, flame , and lavas, by the craters of 

 iEtna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli. Thucydid S :a, Strabo, 

 Pausanlas, Pliny, and others, mention numerous earthquakes in 

 Italy, where mountains were split, cities were overturned, and 

 volcanic islands rose and again subsided. Since the Vesuviau 

 eruption, recorded by Pliny the Younger, no calamity more 

 appalling appears on record than that which took place in 

 153S, when, in a few hours, Monte Nuovo, a flaming moun- 

 tain of four miles in circumference, rose out of the earth, 

 destroying the village of Tripergola, obliterating the Lucrine 

 Lake, and caused the ruin of the countrv to six miles around 

 it; unless one greater still occurred, when Messina in Sicily, 

 and many towns of Calabria, were destroyd in 17S6. 



No author states at what period, and to what extent, vol- 

 canic convulsion changed the surface of Eastern Italy, and 

 separated Calabria from Sicily, by a disrupture now denom- 

 inated the Straits of Messina. The event can only be sur- 

 mised by approximation; for, although the catastrophe confess- 

 edly took place before written historical record, it was not so 

 remote as to have obliterated the terror impressed upon the 

 memories of subsequent generations living in the vicinity, or 

 to have worn away the dangerous impediments of Scylla and 

 Charybdis, which intervened at the most adjacent point for 

 crossing from one coast to the other, and probably not long 

 before the foundations of Zancle (now Messina) were laid. 

 The event may synchronize with the close of that transition 

 era of convulsive phenomena which includes the bursting of 

 the Thracian Bosphorus at the volcanic Cyanean islands ; the 

 Greek deluges ; the separation of Eubcea from Attica ; and the 

 passage of a large diluvian wave across the isthmus of Corinth, 

 which has left indelible marks on all the coasts in the vicinity, 



