ference. We descended some way, but observing that the least motion or noise brought great quantities of ashes and stones rolling together down the sides, and being called back by our guides, who assured us that we could not in safety go lower or even remain in our station, we reascended. We were near enough to the bottom however to observe, that it seemed to be a sort of crust of brown burnt earth, and that a little on one side there were three orifices like funnels, from whence ascended a vapor so thin as to be scarcely perceptible. Such was the state of the crater in the year 1802. 1802. We reached the summit a little before seven, and as we had ascended under the shade of the mountain we had yet felt no inconvenience from the heat; while on the top we were refreshed by a strong wind blowing from the east, and sat down on the highest point of the cone to contemplate the prospect. Vesuvius is about three thousand six hundred feet in height, and of course does not rank among the greater mountains; but its situation is so advantageous, that the scene which it unfolds to the eye probably surpasses that displayed from any other eminence. That scene is Naples, with its bay, its islands, and its bordering promontories; the whole of that delicious region justly denominated the Campania Felice, with its numberless towns and townlike villages. It loses itself in the immensity of the sea on one side, and on the other is bordered by the Apennines, forming a semicircular frame of various tints and bold outline. I own I do not admire views taken from very elevated points; they indeed give a very good geographical idea of a country; but they destroy all the illusions of rural beauty, reduce hills and vales to the same level, and confound all the graceful swells and hollows of an undulated surface, into general flatness and uniformity. The most interesting object seen from the summit of Vesuvius is the mountain itself, torn to pieces by a series of convulsions, and strewed with its own ruins. Vesuvius may be said to have two summits; the cone which I have described, and separated from it by a deep valley, a ridge called Monte Somma from a town that stands on its side. The distance between these two summits in a strait line, may be nearly two thousand feet. The ridge on the side towards the cone presents a steep rugged barren precipice; on the other side, it shelves gently towards the plain, and is covered with verdure and villages. The valley or deep dell that winds be tween these eminences is a desolate hollow, formed entirely of calcined stones, cinders, and ashes, and it resembles a vast subterraneous forge, the rocky roof of which has given way, and admitted light from above. Hence it is conjectured, that it is part of the interior of the mountain, as the ridge that borders it, or the Monte Somma, is the remnant of the exterior, or original surface so much celebrated for its beauty and fertility, previous to the eruption of the year 79 of the Christian era. It is indeed probable, that the throes and convulsions of the mountain in that first tremendous explosion may have totally shattered its upper parts, while the vast ejection of ashes, cinders, ignited stones, and melted minerals, must have left a large void in its centre. One entire side of the mountain seems to have been consumed, or scattered around on this occasion, while the other remains in Monte Somma. The cavity thus formed was filled up in part by the matter ejected in subsequent eruptions, and gradually raised into the present cone, which however varies its shape with every new agitation, and increases or diminishes, according to the quantity of materials thrown out by the mountain. Even in the last eruption*, it lost a considerable share of its elevation, as the greater part of it, after having been raised and kept suspended in the air for some minutes, sunk into⚫ * An. 1794. the crater and almost filled its cavity. The fire raging in the gulph below having thus lost its vent, burst through the flank of the mountain, and poured out a torrent of lava that, as it rolled down the declivity, swept all before it, and in its way to the sea destroyed the greater part of Torre del Greco. It is not my intention to describe the phenomena of Vesuvius, or to relate the details of its eruptions, which have been very numerous since the first recorded in history in the reign of Titus, so well described by Pliny the younger* in two well known epistles to Tacitus the historian. I shall only observe that although this eruption be the first of which we have an account, yet Vesuvius had all the features of a volcano, and particularly the traces of a crater from time immemorial. Strabo speaks of it as being hollowed out into caverns, and having the appearances of being preyed upon by internal fires and Florus relates a stratagem employed by a Roman officer, who, he says, conducted a body of men through the cavities and subterraneous passages of that mountaint. These vestiges how * Pliny vi. 16, 20. + Silius Italicus, who probably witnessed the grand erup ever neither disfigured its form nor checked its fertility; and it is represented as a scene of beauty and abundance, covered with villas and enlivened by population*, when the eruption burst forth with more suddenness and more fury than any similar catastrophe on record. The darkness, the flames, the agitation, the uproar, that accompanied this explosion, and extended its devastation and its terror so widely, might naturally excite among many of the degenerate and epicurean Romans that frequented the Campanian coasts, the opinion that the period of uni tion, seems to have been induced by the previous appearances of Vesuvius to indulge himself in a poetical fiction, and represent it as portending the carnage of Canna by a tremendous explosion Etneos quoque contorquens e cautibus ignes Vesbius intonuit, scopulisque in nubila jactis Phlegræus tetigit trepidantia sidera vertex. Lib. viii. * Hic est pampineis viridis modo Vesvius umbris: Hæc juga, quam Nysæ colles plus Bacchus amavit, Hæc Veneris sedes, Lacedæmone gratior illi: Mart. Lib. iv. |