Notice of Active and Extinct Volcanos. 265 



difference to the course of external events, than an inquiry into 

 their nature, pursued his usual train of studies as before ; but 

 the former, with the zeal and enterprize of a modern naturalist, 

 prepared in defiance of danger, to obtain a nearer view of the 

 phenomena. 



" Accordingly he first repaired to Resina, a village immediately 

 at the foot of Vesuvius, but was soon driven back by the increas- 

 ing shower of ashes, and compelled to put in at Stabiae, where he 

 proposed to pass the night. Even here the accumulation of vol- 

 canic matter round the house he occupied, rendered it necessary 

 for him to remain in the open air, where it would appear that he 

 was suddenly overpowered by some noxious effluvia, for it is said 

 that whilst sitting on the sea-shore under the protection of an 

 awning, flames, preceded by a sulphureous smell, scattered his 

 attendants, and forced him to rise supported by two slaves, but 

 that he quickly fell down, choaked, as his nephew conjectured, 

 by the vapor, which proved the more speedily fatal from his pre- 

 vious weak state of health. The absence of any external injury 

 proves, that his death was caused by some subtle effluvia, rather 

 than by the stones that were falling at the time, and it is well 

 known that gaseous exhalations, alike destructive to animal and 

 vegetable life, are frequent concomitants of a volcanic eruption. 



" The other circumstances of this memorable catastrophe are 

 sketched by the younger Pliny with a rapid but masterly hand. 

 The dense cloud, which hovered round the mountain, pierced 

 occasionally by flashes of fire more considerable than those of 

 lightning, and overspreading the whole neighborhood of Naples 

 with darkness more profound than that of the deepest night; the 

 volumes of ashes which encumbered the earth, even at a distance 

 so great as that of Misenum ; the constant heaving of the ground, 

 and the recession of the sea, form together a picture, which 

 might prepare us for some tremendous catastrophe in the imme 

 diate neighborhood of the volcano. 



" Yet the covering of three entire cities under an heap of ashes 

 from sixty to one hundred and twelve feet in depth, would seem 

 an effort almost too gigantic for the powers of this single moun- 

 tain, if we were not aware of the vast depth at which the volca- 

 nic operations are going on, and the immense extent to which 

 their influence may therefore be supposed to reach. It has been 

 calculated indeed that the masses ejected at different times from 

 Vesuvius vastly exceed the whole bulk of the mountain ;* and 

 yet the latter seems upon the whole to undergo no dimunition, 



* This was remarked even by the ancients, and Seneca, Letter 79, after start- 

 ing the difficulty, solves it by remarking, that the fire of the volcano, " in ipso 

 monte non alimentum habet, sed viam." 



Vol. XIII.— No. 2. 9 



