on all sides. It is composed solely of ashes, and other burnt materials, discharged from the mouth of* 
the volcano, which is in its centre. This conical mountain is of a very large size: its circumference 
cannot be less than ten miles. Here we took a second rest, as the greatest part of our fatigue still 
remained. The mercury had fallen to 20 We found this mountain excessively steep; and although 
it had appeared black, yet it was likewise covered with snow, but the surface (luckily for us) was 
spread over with a pretty thick layer of ashes, thrown from the crater. Had it not been for this, we 
should have been able to get to the top. 
The circumference of this zone or great circle on Etna is not less than seventy or eighty miles. 
It is every where covered by the vineyards, orchards, and corn-fields that compose the Regione 
Culta, or the Fertile Region. The last zone is much broader than the others, and extends on all sides 
to the foot of the mountain. Its whole circumference is 183 miles. 
The present crater of this immense volcano is a circle of about three miles and a half in circum¬ 
ference. It goes shelving down on each side, and forms a regular hollow, like a vast amphitheatre. 
From many places of this space issue volumes of sulphureous smoke, which being much heavier than 
the circumambient air, instead of rising in it, as smoke generally does, immediately on its getting out 
of the crater, rolls down the side of the mountain like a torrent, till coming to that part of the atmo¬ 
sphere of the same specific gravity with itself, it shoots off horizontally; and forms a large tract in the 
air, according to the direction of the wind; which happily for us, carried it exactly to the side oppo¬ 
site to that where we were placed. The crater is so hot that it is very dangerous, if not impossible, 
to go down into it: besides the smoke is very incommodious, and in many places the surface is so soft, 
there have been instances of people sinking down into it and paying for their temerity with their lives. 
Near the centre of the crater is the great mouth of the volcano, that tremendous gulph so celebrated in 
all ages. We beheld it with awe, and with horror, and were not surprised that it had been considered 
by the vulgar, as Hecla is at present, as the place of the damned, and its noises as their groans. When 
we reflect on the immensity of its depth, the vast cells and caverns whence so many lavas have issued; 
the boiling of the matter, the shaking of the mountain, the explosion of flaming rocks, we must allow 
that the liveliest imagination hardly ever formed an idea of hell more dreadful. 
It is a curious consideration that this mountain should re-unite every beauty and every horror; 
and in short, all the most opposite and dissimilar objects in nature. Here you observe a gulph, that 
formerly threw out torrents of fire now covered with the most luxuriant vegetation; and from an 
object of horror becomes one of delight. Flere you gather the most delicious fruits, rising from what 
was lately a black and barren rock. Here the ground is covered with every flower; and we wander 
over those beauties, and contemplate this wilderness of sweets without considering that hell and all its 
terrors, is immediately under our feet, and that a few yards separate us from lakes of liquid fire and 
brimstone. 
But our astonishment still increases, on casting our eyes on the higher regions of the mountain. 
There we behold in perpetual union, the twm elements that are at perpetual war; an immense gulph 
of fire, for ever existing in the midst of snows, which it has not power to melt; and immense fields 
of snow and ice for ever surrounding this gulph of fire, which they have not power to extinguish. 
An eruption of Mount .Etna, in 1669, was preceded for eighteen days* with a dark, thick sky, 
thunder, lightning, and frequent tremblings of the earth. The place of eruption was twenty miles 
from the old mouth: the matter of it was a stream of melted minerals, boiling up and gushing out, 
as water does at the head of a great river. Having run thus for more than a stone’s cast, the extre¬ 
mities began to crust, and turn into porous stones, resembling huge cakes of sea coal, full of a fierce 
fire. These came rolling over one another, and where any thing opposed, filled up the space and 
rolled over. But they bore down any common building, and burnt up all that was combustible. 
This inundation went on about a furlong a day, for nineteen or twenty days. It overwhelmed four¬ 
teen towns and villages. The noise of the eruption was heard sixty miles. 
On Sunday, March 9, 1753, about noon, Mount .Etna began to cast from its mouth a great quan¬ 
tity of flame and smoke, with a most horrible noise. At four o’clock the air became quite dark and 
covered with black clouds. At six a shower of stones, each weighing about three ounces, began to 
fall over all the city of Mascali and its territories. This shower lasted till a quarter past seven; and 
was succeeded all night by a shower of black sand. On Monday morning at eight, there sprang from 
the bottom of the mountain a river of scalding-hot water, which in half a quarter of an hour, over¬ 
flowed all the rugged land that is near the foot of the hill, and suddenly going off, left the whole a 
2. Gr 
