[ 16 ] 
dation of an ancient building ; it is of brick, and 
feems to have been ornamented with white marble, 
many fragments of which are fcattered about. It is 
called the Philofopher’s Tower, and is faid to have 
been inhabited by Empedocles. As the ancients 
ufed to facrifice to the celeftial gods on the top of 
Etna, it may very well be the ruin of a temple 
that ferved for that purpofe. From hence we went 
a little further over the inclined plain abovemen- 
tioned, and faw the evident maiks of a dreadful 
torrent of hot water that came out of the great 
crater at the time of an eruption of lava in the year 
J 755» an ^ upon which phenomenon the canonico 
Recupero, our guide, has publifhed a differtation. 
Luckily this torrent did not take its courfe over the 
inhabited parts of the mountain, as a like accident 
•on mount Vefuvius in 1631 fwept away fome 
towns and villages in its neighbourhood, with tliou- 
fands of their inhabitants. The common received 
opinion is, that thefe eruptions of water proceed from 
the volcanos having a communication with the fea; 
but I rather believe them to proceed merely from 
depositions of rain water in fome of the inward 
cavities of them. We likewif^ faw from hence the 
whole courfe of an ancient lava, the moil confiderable 
as to its extent of any known here; it ran into the 
fea near Taormina, w'hich is not lefs than thirty miles 
from the crater whence it ilTued, and is in many 
parts fifteen miles in breadth. As the lavas of Etna 
are very commonly fifteen and twenty miles in 
•length, fix or feven in breadth, and fifty feet or 
more in depth, you may judge, fir, of the pro- 
digious quantities of matter emitted in a great 
eruption 
