[ 35 ] 
A charitable inftitutlon fends and maintains three hun- 
dred poor patients at the baths of Gurgitelli every 
feafon. By what I could learn of thefe poor patients, 
thofe baths have really done wonders, in cafes attended 
with obflinate tumours, and in contradlions of the 
tendons and mufcles. The patient begins by bathing, 
and then is buried in the hot fand near the fea. In 
many parts of the ifland, the fand is burning hot, 
even under water. The fand on fome parts of the 
fhore is almofl entirely compofed of particles of iron 
ore ; at leafl they are attradfed by the load-flone, as 
I have experienced. Near that part of the ifland 
called Lacco, there is a rock of an ancient lava, 
forming a fmall cavern, which is fhut up with a 
door ; this cavern is made ufe of to cool liquors and 
fruit, which it does in a fliort time as effeftually as 
ice. Before the door was opened, I felt the cold to 
my legs very fenfibly j but when it was opened, the 
cold ruflied out fo as to give me pain, and within the 
grotto it w’as intolerable. I was not fenfible of wind 
attending this cold ; though upon mount Etna and 
mount Vefuvius, where there are caverns of this 
kind, the cold is evidently occafioned by a fubterra- 
neous wind : the natives call fuch places ventaroU, 
May not the quantity of nitre, with which all thefe 
places abound, account in fome meafure for fuch 
extreme cold ? My thermometer was unluckily 
broken, or I would have informed you of the exaA 
degree of the cold in this ve? 2 taroli of ifehia, which 
is by much the drongeft in its effeds I ever felt. The 
ancient lavas of Ifehia fhew, that the eruptions there 
have been very formidable; and hiflory informs us, 
that its firft inhabitants w^re driven out of the ifland 
F 2 by 
