Notice of Active and Extinct Volcanos. 26 1 



many parts indeed its sides have fallen in, but enough yet re- 

 mains to enable the eye of the traveller to fill up the outline. 

 The now detached hills, which appear to have resulted from the 

 destruction of the walls of the crater, must have enclosed a cir- 

 cumference of no less than nine miles, but it is probable that the 

 actual section is much below its former elevation, and that its 

 height was at first considerably greater. 



u Within the space occupied by the original crater, two other 

 volcanic cones have since been thrown up, each provided with 

 its crater ; the magnitude of one of them may be judged of by 

 the fact, that on the summit of the cone is a plain near a mile in 

 circumference, bounded by two lofty eminences, which are the 

 remains of it. 



" It appears therefore that the latest eruptions of this volcano 

 have taken place since tne country was inhabited by man." 



The Ponza Islands are composed principally of rocks of 

 the trachytic series. 



In the midst of the chain of the Appennines is mount Vul- 

 tur, celebrated by Horace, as the scene of some of his early 

 poetical adventures. It is covered with cones and craters — 

 one of which is two thousand feet deep, and two of them are 

 lakes. The lava of this mountain abounds with the mineral 

 called Hauyne. 



"About a mile to the east of Mount Vultur, in a place called 

 Rendina, is a Moffette, or an exhalation of some noxious vapor, 

 which produces a sharp, smarting sensation on the organs of sight, 

 smell, and taste, and causes fainting in those who breathe it too 

 freely. Near Atella, on the western s;de of Mount Vultur, are 

 waters impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, and carbonic 

 acid gases. I know not whether the neighboring town of Ache- 

 rontia, now Achera, derived its name from any appearances of 

 the same kind, like Lake Fusaro, near Naples. 



" The magnitude of Mount Vultur, which is stated differently 

 at twenty-two and at thirty miles in diameter at its base, indicates 

 the extent of the volcanic operations that formerly must have 

 taken place, yet all records of its eruptions are lost in the dark- 

 ness of antiquity." 



Between the two volcanos of Mount Vultur and Rocca 

 JMonfina, is the lago de Ansanto. 



" It has a circumference of about one hundred and sixty feet ; 

 and is no more than five or six in depth ; its waters are from 

 seven to twenty-one degrees of Reaumur above the temperature 

 of the external air, the excess being least in winter and greatest 



