VOLCANOES. 71 
filled to the brim with liquid matter, so as to overflow. Of the 
period daring which the mountains of Asia, Africa, and America 
have been volcanoes we know nothing. Mankind appear to have 
been first civilized around the eastern shores of the Mediteranean. 
There letters were invented — there first historians provided as is 
said by the father of history, £ls ^ure t# ymptui i\«t^^u-Kut t» %go»« 
«|<t«a« yevnT«<, — "that the glorious actions performed by illus- 
trious men, should not be forgotten;" and in relating the ex- 
ploits of men, they furnish the earliest accounts that have come 
down to us (those contained in the sacred scriptures excepted) of 
the changes that have occurred in the physical world. The only 
volcanoes, therefore, whose history we can hope to know with 
any considerable degree of exactness, are those which are near 
the shores of the Mediteranean. 
iEtna is not mentioned as a burning mountain by Homer, and 
it has thence been inferred that it was not a volcano in his time. 
But it may have burnt in former ages, and been slumbering in 
the days of Homer. The same is true of the Lipari Islands. 
Pindar decribes iEtna as a cauldron of liquid fire; and Thucydides 
informs us that the eruption which must have given rise to Pin- 
dar's allusion, was the second that had oceured since the Greeks 
had settled on the coasts of Sicily. 
From the building of Rome till the year 79 after Christ, a 
period of more than eight centuries, Vesuvius appears to have 
been in a state of profound repose, as no mention is made of any 
eruption during the whole of that period-, and the ancient writers 
who refer to this mountain, always speak of its extraordinary 
beauty and fertility. There were, however, appearances near its 
summit, which left no doubt of its prior volcanic state, and the 
cities in its vicinity were paved with the lava of ancient eruptions. 
Vitruvius, who flourished under Augustus, says that Vesuvius had 
formerly been burning, and had covered all the adjacent country 
with its fires. Other classic authors hold similar language res- 
pecting it. 
The first great eruption on record, took place in the time of 
Titus, in the year 79, and buried the towns of Herculaneum, 
Pompeii, and Stabile under showers of volcanic sand, stones and 
scoriae. After this Vesuvius continued a burning mountain, hav- 
ing eruptions at intervals for more than a thousand years. The 
fire then seemed to be tending to extinction, as there were but two 
eruptions in four hundred and ninety-two years, one in 1306, and 
another which was inconsiderable in 1500. In 1631, woods were 
growing on the sides of the crater, cattle were pastured there, and 
it was the haunt of wild animals. For the last two hundred years 
the eruptions have been frequent. Whilst Vesuvius has experi- 
enced these vicissitudes, Stromboli, one of the Lipari Islands, 
from the time when the earliest notices of it occur on the pages 
of history, to the present day — though separated from it by an 
