Principles of Geology Part 31

Columns are lying on the ground only half hewn from huge blocks of travertin, and the temple for which they were designed is seen half repaired. In some few places the pavement had sunk in, but in general it was undisturbed, consisting of large irregular flags of lava joined neatly together, in which the carriage wheels have often worn ruts an inch and a half deep. In the wider streets, the ruts are numerous and irregular; in the narrower, there are only two, one on each side, which are very conspicuous. It is impossible not to look with some interest even on these ruts, which were worn by chariot wheels more than seventeen centuries ago; and, independently of their antiquity, it is remarkable to see such deep incisions so continuous in a stone of great hardness.

_Small number of skeletons._--A very small number of skeletons have been discovered in either city; and it is clear that most of the inhabitants not only found time to escape, but also to carry with them the princ.i.p.al part of their valuable effects. In the barracks at Pompeii were the skeletons of two soldiers chained to the stocks, and in the vaults of a country-house in the suburbs were the skeletons of seventeen persons, who appear to have fled there to escape from the shower of ashes. They were found inclosed in an indurated tuff, and in this matrix was preserved a perfect cast of a woman, perhaps the mistress of the house, with an infant in her arms. Although her form was imprinted on the rock, nothing but the bones remained. To these a chain of gold was suspended, and on the fingers of the skeletons were rings with jewels. Against the sides of the same vault was ranged a long line of earthen amphorae.

The writings scribbled by the soldiers on the walls of their barracks, and the names of the owners of each house written over the doors, are still perfectly legible. The colors of fresco paintings on the stuccoed walls in the interior of buildings are almost as vivid as if they were just finished. There are public fountains decorated with sh.e.l.ls laid out in patterns in the same fas.h.i.+on as those now seen in the town of Naples; and in the room of a painter, who was perhaps a naturalist, a large collection of sh.e.l.ls was found, comprising a great variety of Mediterranean species, in as good a state of preservation as if they had remained for the same number of years in a museum. A comparison of these remains, with those found so generally in a fossil state would not a.s.sist us in obtaining the least insight into the time required to produce a certain degree of decomposition or mineralization; for, although under favorable circ.u.mstances much greater alteration might doubtless have been brought about in a shorter period, yet the example before us shows that an inhumation of seventeen centuries may sometimes effect nothing towards the reduction of sh.e.l.ls to the state in which fossils are usually found.

The wooden beams in the houses at Herculaneum are black on the exterior, but, when cleft open, they appear to be almost in the state of ordinary wood, and the progress made by the whole ma.s.s towards the state of lignite is scarcely appreciable. Some animal and vegetable substances of more perishable kinds have of course suffered much change and decay, yet the state of preservation of these is truly remarkable. Fis.h.i.+ng-nets are very abundant in both cities, often quite entire; and their number at Pompeii is the more interesting from the sea being now, as we stated, a mile distant. Linen has been found at Herculaneum, with the texture well defined; and in a fruiterer's shop in that city were discovered vessels full of almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, and fruit of the "carubiere," all distinctly recognizable from their shape. A loaf, also, still retaining its form, was found in a baker's shop, with his name stamped upon it. On the counter of an apothecary was a box of pills converted into a fine earthy substance; and by the side of it a small cylindrical roll evidently prepared to be cut into pills. By the side of these was a jar containing medicinal herbs. In 1827, moist olives were found in a square gla.s.s-case, and "caviare," or roe of a fish, in a state of wonderful preservation. An examination of these curious condiments has been published by Covelli of Naples, and they are preserved hermetically sealed in the museum there.[556]

_Papyri._--There is a marked difference in the condition and appearance of the animal and vegetable substances found at Pompeii and Herculaneum; those of Pompeii being penetrated by a gray pulverulent tuff, those in Herculaneum seeming to have been first enveloped by a paste which consolidated round them, and then allowed them to become slowly carbonized. Some of the rolls of papyrus at Pompeii still retain their form; but the writing, and indeed almost all the vegetable matter, appear to have vanished, and to have been replaced by volcanic tuff somewhat pulverulent. At Herculaneum the earthy matter has scarcely ever penetrated; and the vegetable substance of the papyrus has become a thin friable black matter, almost resembling in appearance the tinder which remains when stiff paper has been burnt, in which the letters may still be sometimes traced. The small bundles of papyri, composed of five or six rolls tied up together, had sometimes lain horizontally, and were pressed in that direction, but sometimes they had been placed in a vertical position. Small tickets were attached to each bundle, on which the t.i.tle of the work was inscribed. In one case only have the sheets been found with writing on both sides of the pages. So numerous are the obliterations and corrections, that many must have been original ma.n.u.scripts. The variety of handwritings is quite extraordinary: nearly all are written in Greek, but there are a few in Latin. They were almost all found in a suburban villa in the library of one private individual; and the t.i.tles of four hundred of those least injured, which have been read, are found to be unimportant works, but all entirely new, chiefly relating to music, rhetoric, and cookery. There are two volumes of Epicurus "On Nature," and the others are mostly by writers of the same school, only one fragment having been discovered, by an opponent of the Epicurean system, Chrysippus.[557]

_Probability of future discoveries of MSS._--In the opinion of some antiquaries, not one-hundredth part of the city has yet been explored: and the quarters. .h.i.therto cleared out at a great expense, are those where there was the least probability of discovering ma.n.u.scripts. As Italy could already boast her splendid Roman amphitheatres and Greek temples, it was a matter of secondary interest to add to their number those in the dark and dripping galleries of Herculaneum; and having so many of the masterpieces of ancient art, we could have dispensed with the inferior busts and statues which could alone have been expected to reward our researches in the ruins of a provincial town. But from the moment that it was ascertained that rolls of papyrus preserved in this city could still be deciphered, every exertion ought to have been steadily and exclusively directed towards the discovery of other libraries. Private dwellings should have been searched, before so much labor and expense were consumed in examining public edifices. A small portion of that zeal and enlightened spirit which prompted the late French and Tuscan expedition to Egypt might long ere this, in a country nearer home, have s.n.a.t.c.hed from oblivion some of the lost works of the Augustan age, or of eminent Greek historians and philosophers. A single roll of papyrus might have disclosed more matter of intense interest than all that was ever written in hieroglyphics.

_Stabiae._--Besides the cities already mentioned, Stabiae, a small town about six miles from Vesuvius, and near the site of the modern Castel-a-Mare (see map of volcanic district of Naples), was overwhelmed during the eruption of 79. Pliny mentions that, when his uncle was there, he was obliged to make his escape, so great was the quant.i.ty of falling stones and ashes. In the ruins of this place, a few skeletons have been found buried in volcanic ejections, together with some antiquities of no great value, and rolls of papyrus, which, like those of Pompeii, were illegible.

_Torre del Greco overflowed by lava._--Of the towns. .h.i.therto mentioned, Herculaneum alone has been overflowed by a stream of melted matter; but this did not, as we have seen, enter or injure the buildings, which were previously enveloped or covered over with tuff. But burning torrents have often taken their course through the streets of Torre del Greco, and consumed or inclosed a large portion of the town in solid rock. It seems probable that the destruction of three thousand of its inhabitants in 1631, which some accounts attribute to boiling water, was princ.i.p.ally due to one of those alluvial floods which we before mentioned: but, in 1737, the lava itself flowed through the eastern side of the town, and afterwards reached the sea; and, in 1794, another current, rolling over the western side, filled the streets and houses, and killed more than four hundred persons. The main street is now quarried through this lava, which supplied building stones for new houses erected where others had been annihilated. The church was half buried in a rocky ma.s.s, but the upper portion served as the foundation of a new edifice.

The number of the population at present is estimated at fifteen thousand; and a satisfactory answer may readily be returned to those who inquire how the inhabitants can be so "inattentive to the voice of time and the warnings of nature,"[558] as to rebuild their dwellings on a spot so often devastated. No neighboring site unoccupied by a town, or which would not be equally insecure, combines the same advantages of proximity to the capital, to the sea, and to the rich lands on the flanks of Vesuvius. If the present population were exiled, they would immediately be replaced by another, for the same reason that the Maremma of Tuscany and the Campagna di Roma will never be depopulated, although the malaria fever commits more havoc in a few years than the Vesuvian lavas in as many centuries. The district around Naples supplies one amongst innumerable examples, that those regions where the surface is most frequently renewed, and where the renovation is accompanied, at different intervals of time, by partial destruction of animal and vegetable life, may nevertheless be amongst the most habitable and delightful on our globe.

I have already made a similar remark when speaking of tracts where aqueous causes are now most active; and the observation applies as well to parts of the surface which are the abode of aquatic animals, as to those which support terrestrial species. The sloping sides of Vesuvius give nourishment to a vigorous and healthy population of about eighty thousand souls; and the surrounding hills and plains, together with several of the adjoining isles, owe the fertility of their soil to matter ejected by prior eruptions. Had the fundamental limestone of the Apennines remained uncovered throughout the whole area, the country could not have sustained a twentieth part of its present inhabitants.

This will be apparent to every geologist who has marked the change in the agricultural character of the soil the moment he has pa.s.sed the utmost boundary of the volcanic ejections, as when, for example, at the distance of about seven miles from Vesuvius, he leaves the plain and ascends the declivity of the Sorrentine Hills.

Yet, favored as this region has been by Nature from time immemorial, the signs of the changes imprinted on it during the period that it has served as the habitation of man may appear in after-ages to indicate a series of unparalleled disasters. Let us suppose that at some future time the Mediterranean should form a gulf of the great ocean, and that the waves and tidal current should encroach on the sh.o.r.es of Campania, as it now advances upon the eastern coast of England; the geologist will then behold the towns already buried, and many more which will evidently be entombed hereafter, laid open in the steep cliffs, where he will discover buildings superimposed above each other, with thick intervening strata of tuff or lava--some unscathed by fire, like those of Herculaneum and Pompeii; others half melted down, as in Torre del Greco; and many shattered and thrown about in strange confusion, as in Tripergola, beneath Monte Nuovo. Among the ruins will be seen skeletons of men, and impressions of the human form stamped in solid rocks of tuff. Nor will the signs of earthquakes be wanting. The pavement of part of the Domitian Way, and the temple of the Nymphs, submerged at high tide, will be uncovered at low water, the columns remaining erect and uninjured. Other temples which had once sunk down, like that of Serapis, will be found to have been upraised again by subsequent movements. If they who study these phenomena, and speculate on their causes, a.s.sume that there were periods when the laws of Nature or the whole course of natural events differed greatly from those observed in their own time, they will scarcely hesitate to refer the wonderful monuments in question to those primeval ages. When they consider the numerous proofs of reiterated catastrophes to which the region was subject, they may, perhaps, commiserate the unhappy fate of beings condemned to inhabit a planet during its nascent and chaotic state, and feel grateful that their favored race has escaped such scenes of anarchy and misrule.

Yet what was the real condition of Campania during those years of dire convulsion? "A climate where heaven's breath smells sweet and wooingly--a vigorous and luxuriant nature unparalleled in its productions--a coast which was once the fairy-land of poets, and the favorite retreat of great men. Even the tyrants of the creation loved this alluring region, spared it, adorned it, lived in it, died in it."[559] The inhabitants, indeed, have enjoyed no immunity from the calamities which are the lot of mankind; but the princ.i.p.al evils which they have suffered must be attributed to moral, not to physical, causes--to disastrous events over which man might have exercised a control, rather than to the inevitable catastrophes which result from subterranean agency. When Spartacus encamped his army of ten thousand gladiators in the old extinct crater of Vesuvius, the volcano was more justly a subject of terror to Campania, than it has ever been since the rekindling of its fires.

CHAPTER XXV.

ETNA.

External physiognomy of Etna--Lateral cones--Their successive obliteration--Early eruptions--Monti Rossi in 1669--Towns overflowed by lava--Part of Catania overflowed--Mode of advance of a current of lava--Subterranean caverns--Marine strata at base of Etna--Val del Bove not an ancient crater--Its scenery--Form, composition, and origin of the dikes--Linear direction of cones formed in 1811 and 1819--Lavas and breccias--Flood produced by the melting of snow by lava--Glacier covered by a lava stream--Val del Bove how formed--Structure and origin of the cone of Etna--Whether the inclined sheets of lava were originally horizontal--Antiquity of Etna--Whether signs of diluvial waves are observable on Etna.

_External physiognomy of Etna._--After Vesuvius, our most authentic records relate to Etna, which rises near the sea in solitary grandeur to the height of nearly eleven thousand feet.[560] The base of the cone is almost circular, and eighty-seven English miles in circ.u.mference; but if we include the whole district over which its lavas extend, the circuit is probably twice that extent.

_Divided into three regions._--The cone is divided by nature into three distinct zones, called the _fertile_, the _woody_, and the _desert_ regions. The first of these, comprising the delightful country around the skirts of the mountain, is well cultivated, thickly inhabited, and covered with olives, vines, corn, fruit-trees, and aromatic herbs.

Higher up, the woody region encircles the mountain--an extensive forest six or seven miles in width, affording pasturage for numerous flocks.

The trees are of various species, the chestnut, oak, and pine being most luxuriant; while in some tracts are groves of cork and beech. Above the forest is the desert region, a waste of black lava and scoriae; where, on a kind of plain, rises a cone of eruption to the height of about eleven hundred feet, from which sulphureous vapors are continually evolved.

_Cones produced by lateral eruption._--The most grand and original feature in the physiognomy of Etna is the mult.i.tude of minor cones which are distributed over its flanks, and which are most abundant in the woody region. These, although they appear but trifling irregularities when viewed from a distance as subordinate parts of so imposing and colossal a mountain, would, nevertheless, be deemed hills of considerable alt.i.tude in almost any other region. Without enumerating numerous monticules of ashes thrown out at different points, there are about eighty of these secondary volcanoes, of considerable dimensions; fifty-two on the west and north, and twenty-seven on the east side of Etna. One of the largest, called Monte Minardo, near Bronte, is upwards of 700 feet in height, and a double hill near Nicolosi, called Monti Rossi, formed in 1669, is 450 feet high, and the base two miles in circ.u.mference; so that it somewhat exceeds in size Monte Nuovo, before described. Yet it ranks only as a cone of the second magnitude amongst those produced by the lateral eruptions of Etna. On looking down from the lower borders of the desert region, these volcanoes present us with one of the most delightful and characteristic scenes in Europe. They afford every variety of height and size, and are arranged in beautiful and picturesque groups. However uniform they may appear when seen from the sea, or the plains below, nothing can be more diversified than their shape when we look from above into their craters, one side of which is generally broken down. There are, indeed, few objects in nature more picturesque than a wooded volcanic crater. The cones situated in the higher parts of the forest zone are chiefly clothed with lofty pines; while those at a lower elevation are adorned with chestnuts, oaks, beech, and holm.

_Successive obliteration of these cones._--The history of the eruptions of Etna, imperfect and interrupted as it is, affords us, nevertheless, much insight into the manner in which the whole mountain has successively attained its present magnitude and internal structure. The princ.i.p.al cone has more than once fallen in and been reproduced. In 1444 it was 320 feet high, and fell in after the earthquakes of 1537. In the year 1693, when a violent earthquake shook the whole of Sicily, and killed sixty thousand persons, the cone lost so much of its height, says Boccone, that it could not be seen from several places in Valdemone, from which it was before visible. The greater number of eruptions happen either from the great crater, or from lateral openings in the desert region. When hills are thrown up in the middle zone, and project beyond the general level, they gradually lose their height during subsequent eruptions; for when lava runs down from the upper parts of the mountain, and encounters any of these hills, the stream is divided, and flows round them so as to elevate the gently sloping grounds from which they rise. In this manner a deduction is often made at once of twenty or thirty feet, or even more, from their height. Thus, one of the minor cones, called Monte Peluso, was diminished in alt.i.tude by a great lava stream which encircled it in 1444; and another current has recently taken the same course--yet this hill still remains four or five hundred feet high.

There is a cone called Monte Nucilla near Nicolosi, round the base of which several successive currents have flowed, and showers of ashes have fallen, since the time of history, till at last, during an eruption in 1536, the surrounding plain was so raised, that the top of the cone alone was left projecting above the general level. Monte Nero, situated above the Grotta dell' Capre, was in 1766 almost submerged by a current: and Monte Capreolo afforded, in the year 1669, a curious example of one of the last stages of obliteration; for a lava stream, descending on a high ridge which had been built up by the continued superposition of successive lavas, flowed directly into the crater, and nearly filled it.

The lava, therefore, of each new lateral cone tends to detract from the relative height of lower cones above their base: so that the flanks of Etna, sloping with a gentle inclination, envelop in succession a great mult.i.tude of minor volcanoes, while new ones spring up from time to time.

_Early eruptions of Etna._--Etna appears to have been in activity from the earliest times of tradition; for Diodorus Siculus mentions an eruption which caused a district to be deserted by the Sicani before the Trojan war. Thucydides informs us, that in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, or in the spring of the year 425 B. C., a lava stream ravaged the environs of Catania, and this he says was the third eruption which had happened in Sicily since the colonization of that island by the Greeks.[561] The second of the three eruptions alluded to by the historian took place in the year 475 B. C., and was that so poetically described by Pindar, two years afterwards, in his first Pythian ode:--

?' ???a??a s??e?e?

??f?es?' ??t?a, pa?ete?

?????? ??e?a? t????a.

In these and the seven verses which follow, a graphic description is given of Etna, such as it appeared five centuries before the Christian era, and such as it has been seen when in eruption in modern times. The poet is only making a pa.s.sing allusion to the Sicilian volcano, as the mountain under which Typhoeus lay buried, yet by a few touches of his master-hand every striking feature of the scene has been faithfully portrayed. We are told of "the snowy Etna, the pillar of heaven--the nurse of everlasting frost, in whose deep caverns lie concealed the fountains of unapproachable fire--a stream of eddying smoke by day--a bright and ruddy flame by night; and burning rocks rolled down with loud uproar into the sea."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 46.

Minor cones on the flanks of Etna.

1. Monti Rossi, near Nicolosi, formed in 1669. 2. Vampeluso?[562]]

_Eruption of 1669--Monti Rossi formed._--The great eruption which happened in the year 1669 is the first which claims particular attention. An earthquake had levelled to the ground all the houses in Nicolosi, a town situated near the lower margin of the woody region, about twenty miles from the summit of Etna, and ten from the sea at Catania. Two gulfs then opened near that town, from whence sand and scoriae were thrown up in such quant.i.ty, that in the course of three or four months a double cone was formed, called Monti Rossi, about 450 feet high. But the most extraordinary phenomenon occurred at the commencement of the convulsion in the plain of S. Lio. A fissure six feet broad, and of unknown depth, opened with a loud crash, and ran in a somewhat tortuous course to within a mile of the summit of Etna. Its direction was from north to south, and its length twelve miles. It emitted a most vivid light. Five other parallel fissures of considerable length afterwards opened, one after the other, and emitted smoke, and gave out bellowing sounds which were heard at the distance of forty miles. This case seems to present the geologist with an ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which those continuous dikes of vertical porphyry were formed, which are seen to traverse some of the older lavas of Etna; for the light emitted from the great rent of S. Lio appears to indicate that the fissure was filled to a certain height with incandescent lava, probably to the height of an orifice not far distant from Monti Rossi, which at that time opened and poured out a lava current. When the melted matter in such a rent has cooled, it must become a solid wall or dike, intersecting the older rocks of which the mountain is composed; similar rents have been observed during subsequent eruptions, as in 1832, when they ran in all directions from the centre of the volcano. It has been justly remarked by M. Elie de Beaumont, that such star-shaped fractures may indicate a slight upheaval of the whole of Etna. They may be the signs of the stretching of the ma.s.s, which may thus be raised gradually by a force from below.[563]

The lava current of 1669, before alluded to, soon reached in its course a minor cone called Mompiliere, at the base of which it entered a subterranean grotto, communicating with a suite of those caverns which are so common in the lavas of Etna. Here it appears to have melted down some of the vaulted foundations of the hill, so that the whole of that cone became slightly depressed and traversed by numerous open fissures.

_Part of Catania destroyed._--The lava, after overflowing fourteen towns and villages, some having a population of between three and four thousand inhabitants, arrived at length at the walls of Catania. These had been purposely raised to protect the city; but the burning flood acc.u.mulated till it rose to the top of the rampart, which was sixty feet in height, and then it fell in a fiery cascade and overwhelmed part of the city. The wall, however, was not thrown down, but was discovered long afterwards by excavations made in the rock by the Prince of Biscari; so that the traveller may now see the solid lava curling over the top of the rampart as if still in the very act of falling.

This great current performed the first thirteen miles of its course in twenty days, or at the rate of 162 feet per hour, but required twenty-three days for the last two miles, giving a velocity of only twenty-two feet per hour; and we learn from Dolomieu that the stream moved during part of its course at the rate of 1500 feet an hour, and in others it took several days to cover a few yards.[564] When it entered the sea it was still six hundred yards broad, and forty feet deep. It covered some territories in the environs of Catania which had never before been visited by the lavas of Etna. While moving on, its surface was in general a ma.s.s of solid rock; and its mode of advancing, as is usual with lava streams, was by the occasional fissuring of the solid walls. A gentleman of Catania, named Pappalardo, desiring to secure the city from the approach of the threatening torrent, went out with a party of fifty men whom he had dressed in skins to protect them from the heat, and armed with iron crows and hooks. They broke open one of the solid walls which flanked the current near Belpa.s.so, and immediately forth issued a rivulet of melted matter which took the direction of Paterno; but the inhabitants of that town, being alarmed for their safety, took up arms and put a stop to farther operations.[565]

As another ill.u.s.tration of the solidity of the walls of an advancing lava stream, I may mention an adventure related by Recupero, who, in 1766, had ascended a small hill formed of ancient volcanic matter, to behold the slow and gradual approach of a fiery current, two miles and a half broad; when suddenly two small threads of liquid matter issuing from a crevice detached themselves from the main stream, and ran rapidly towards the hill. He and his guide had just time to escape, when they saw the hill, which was fifty feet in height, surrounded, and in a quarter of an hour melted down into the burning ma.s.s, so as to flow on with it.

But it must not be supposed that this complete fusion of rocky matter coming in contact with lava is of universal, or even common, occurrence.

It probably happens when fresh portions of incandescent matter come successively in contact with fusible materials. In many of the dikes which intersect the tuffs and lavas of Etna, there is scarcely any perceptible alteration effected by heat on the edges of the horizontal beds, in contact with the vertical and more crystalline ma.s.s. On the side of Mompiliere, one of the towns overflowed in the great eruption above described, an excavation was made in 1704; and by immense labor the workmen reached, at the depth of thirty-five feet, the gate of the princ.i.p.al church, where there were three statues, held in high veneration. One of these, together with a bell, some money, and other articles, were extracted in a good state of preservation from beneath a great arch formed by the lava. It seems very extraordinary that any works of art, not encased with tuff, like those in Herculaneum, should have escaped fusion in hollow s.p.a.ces left open in this lava-current, which was so hot at Catania eight years after it entered the town, that it was impossible to hold the hand in some of the crevices.

_Subterranean caverns on Etna._--Mention was made of the entrance of a lava-stream into a subterranean grotto, whereby the foundations of a hill were partially undermined. Such underground pa.s.sages are among the most curious features on Etna, and appear to have been produced by the hardening of the lava, during the escape of great volumes of elastic fluids, which are often discharged for many days in succession, after the crisis of the eruption is over. Near Nicolosi, not far from Monti Rossi, one of these great openings may be seen, called the Fossa della Palomba, 625 feet in circ.u.mference at its mouth, and seventy-eight deep.

After reaching the bottom of this, we enter another dark cavity, and then others in succession, sometimes descending precipices by means of ladders. At length the vaults terminate in a great gallery ninety feet long, and from fifteen to fifty broad, beyond which there is still a pa.s.sage, never yet explored; so that the extent of these caverns remains unknown.[566] The walls and roofs of these great vaults are composed of rough and bristling scoriae, of the most fantastic forms.

_Marine strata at base of Etna._--If we skirt the fertile region at the base of Etna on its southern and eastern sides, we behold marine strata of clay sand, and volcanic tuff, cropping out from beneath the modern lavas. The marine fossil sh.e.l.ls occurring in these strata are all of them, or nearly all, identical with species now inhabiting the Mediterranean; and as they appear at the height of from 600 to 800 feet above the sea near Catania, they clearly prove that there has been in this region, as in other parts of Sicily farther to the south, an upward movement of the ancient bed of the sea. It is fair, therefore, to infer that the whole mountain, with the exception of those parts which are of very modern origin, has partic.i.p.ated in this upheaval.

If we view Etna from the south, we see the marine deposits above alluded to, forming a low line of hills (_e_, _e_, Fig. 47), or a steep inland slope or cliff (_f_), as in the annexed drawing taken from the limestone platform of Primosole. It should be observed however, in reference to this view, that the height of the volcanic cone is ten times greater than the hills at its base (_e_, _e_), although it appears less elevated, because the summit of the cone is ten or twelve times more distant from the plain of Catania than is Licodia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 47.

View of Etna from the summit of the limestone platform of Primosole.

_a_, Highest cone.

_b_, Montagnuola.

_c_, Monte Minardo, with smaller lateral cones above.

_d_, Town of Licodia dei Monaci.

_e_, Marine formation called creta, argillaceous and sandy beds with a few sh.e.l.ls, and a.s.sociated volcanic rocks.

_f_, Escarpment of stratified subaqueous volcanic tuff, &c., northwest of Catania.