LYELL — OX CRATERS OF ELEVATIOX. 



325 



was covered with snow. The Canon Recupero, a good observer and 

 man of great sagacity, was commissioned by Charles of Bonrbon, 

 King of Naples, to report on the natm^e and cause of the catastrophe. 

 He accordingly visited the Yal del Bove in the month of June, thi^ee 

 months after the event, and fomid that the channel of the recent 

 flood, now less than two Sicilian miles broad, was still strewed over 

 with, sand and fragments of rock to the depth of forty palms*. The 

 volume of water in a length of one mile he estimated at sixteen 

 millions of cubic feet, and he says that it ran at the rate of a mile in 

 a minute and a half for the first twelve miles. At the upper end of 

 Yal del Bove, all the pre-existing inequalities of the gTound for a 

 space of two miles in leng-th and one in breadth w^ere perfectly 

 levelled up and made quite even, and the marks of the passage of the 

 flood were traceable from thence up the gTeat precipice, or Balzo di 

 Tiifoglietto, to the Piano del Lago, or highest platform. 



Recupero, in his report, maintains that if all the snow on Etna, 

 which he affirms is never more than four feet deep (some chasms we 

 presume excepted), were melted in one instant, wliich no current of 

 lava could accomplish, it w^ould not have supplied such a volume of 

 water. He came therefore to the startling conclusion that the water 

 was vomited forth by the crater itself, and w^as driven out from some 

 reservoir in the interior of Etna. 



As it seems unlikely the Canon could have been mistaken as to 

 the region of the mountain whence the waters came. Sir Charles sub- 

 mits as an explanation, that there might have been at the time of 

 that eruption not only the winter's snow of that year, but many older 

 layers of ice, alternating with volcanic sand and lava, at the foot or 

 on the flanks of the cone which were suddenly melted by the per- 

 meation through them of hot vapours, and the injection into them of 

 melted matter. 



In the first edition of the " Principles of Geology" the existence of 

 a glacier under the volcanic sand and lava near the Casa Inglese is 

 noticed ; and if glaciers may thus endure for long series of years, the 

 store of w^ater which Recupero speculated upon as contained in the 

 interior of the mountain seems sufficiently accounted for. 



The gradual rise of the sea-coast, and of the inland clifis at the 

 eastern base of Etna is attested by the existence of alluvial deposits 

 in some places some hundred feet above the sea ; while the fossils 

 contained in them, and those contained in the fossiliferous strata cut 

 into terraces at various heights, afford intelligible data for working 

 out the general history of such upheaval. The proximity of land, for 

 instance, is shown by the tusks and teeth of elephants at Palerno and 

 Terra Forte ; while the existence at other places, as near the church 

 St. Andrea, below Taormina, of raised beaches containing shells of 

 recent species shows a former coastal line. It seems probable also, 

 from the leaf-bearing tuffs of Fasano, near Catania, that a portion of 

 Etna is of sub-aerial origin, coeval with the upraised alluvial and 



* A palm is a fraction more than 10 inches English. 



