Mount Aetna

“ The leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the Ascent of Mount Ætna by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. ”

“ The same is mentioned by Posidonius in Strabo; and also by Diodorus, who adds, [586] Τα μεν ορη δια το συμβεβηκος κληθηναι Πυρηναια. That the mountains from hence had the name of Pyrenæi. Mount Ætna is derived very truly by Bochart from Aituna, fornax; as being a reservoir of molten matter. There was another very antient name, Inessus; by which the natives called the hill, as well as the city, which was towards the bottom of it. The name is a compound of Ain-Es, like Hanes in Egypt; and signifies a fountain of fire. ”

“ A party of Englishmen, I have heard, went up Mount Aetna, during the night, to be ready for sunrise—a common practice with tourists both in Switzerland, Wales, Cumberland, &c.; but, as all must see who take the trouble to reflect, not likely to repay the trouble; seeing that every thing which offers a picture, when viewed from a station nearly horizontal, becomes a mere map to an eye placed at an elevation of 3000 feet above it ”

“ You will behold no sights so great belonging to the human rabble-- (this you will find) especially if you keep watch when the Dog-star is blazing in his heat. Yet there is a wonderful story of its own which attends the mountain: it is no less famous for a fire of goodness than for one of guilt. Once Aetna burst open its caverns and glowed white-hot: as though its deep-pent furnaces were shattered, a vast wave of fire gushed forth afar upborne by the heat of the lava-stone, just as when the ether lightens under the fury of Jupiter and plagues the sky with murky gloom. ”

“ Yet her fire is not of the limited heat within our own experience, but more akin to that of heaven or the kind of flame with which Jupiter himself is armed. With these mighty forces is allied the gigantic volcanic spirit forced out of straitened jaws, as when mechanics hasten to pit their strength against masses of natural iron, they stir the fires and, expelling the wind from panting bellows, rouse the current in close array. Such is the manner of its working: so goes far-famed Aetna's burning. The earth draws in forces through her perforations ”

“ XXI But better than any signs and tested by real proofs, true fact encounters us: it seeks not to deceive the watcher. Round the sides and at the lowest base of Aetna rocks fume with white heat and scattered boulders cool down in their pores, enabling you to believe the evidence that the lava-stone is food and cause of the burning: its failure gathers only starveling fires. ”

“ Owing to the great height of Mount Etna, the lava seldom rises so far as to flow from the summit. It more frequently bursts forth from the flanks of the mountain; and in this manner there have been formed numerous smaller cones, of which several have craters of their own. Hence Etna is rather a group of volcanoes than a single cone; but all these subordinate volcanic hills cluster round the flanks of the great central summit. Etna may thus be regarded as a fertile mother of mountains, with all her children around her. ”

“ VII Next, there is a sacrilegious legend which molests with Phlegra's warfare the ever-living fires of Aetna's summit. In olden time the giants essayed impiously to thrust down the stars from the firmament, then capturing Jove to place his sovereignty elsewhere and impose their laws on vanquished heaven. These monsters have man's nature down to the belly ”

“ The eruptions of Etna have blackened the whole land for miles in every direction. That is the first observation forced upon one in the neighbourhood of Catania, or Giarre, or Bronte. From whatever point of view you look at Etna, it is always a regular pyramid, with long and gradually sloping sides, broken here and there by the excrescence of minor craters and dotted over with villages; the summit crowned with snow, divided into peak and cone, girdled with clouds, and capped with smoke, that shifts shape as the wind veers, dominates a blue-black monstrous mass of outpoured lava. ”

“ This also was probably drawn from the imagination; no one who has ever seen the mountain would recognise it, for it has a small base, and sides which rival the Matterhorn in abruptness. Over against the coast of Sicily, and near the mountain, is written:—"Mount Etna, or Mount Gibello. This mountain sometimes issues out pure flame, and at other times a thick smoak with ashes; streams of fire run down with great quantities of burning stones, and has made many eruptions." ”

“ Mount Etna, one of the most majestic of all the volcanoes, which the ancients considered as one of the highest mountains in the world, and on the summit of which they believed that Deucalion and Pyrrha sought refuge, to save themselves from the universal deluge, is situated on the plain of Catania, in Sicily. ”

“ After having passed the morning of the 25th in these observations, we proceeded through the second or middle region of [Pg 68] Etna, called La Selvosa, the woody, than which nothing can be more beautiful. On every side are mountains, or fragments of mountains, that have been thrown up by various ancient explosions; there are some near as high as Mount Vesuvius; one in particular (as the Canon our guide assured me, having measured it) is little less than one mile in perpendicular height, and five in circumference at its basis. ”

“ Every eruption generally forms one of these mountains. As the great crater of Ætna itself is raised to such an enormous height above the lower regions of the mountain, it is not impossible, that the internal fire raging for a vent, even round the base, and no doubt vastly below it, should be carried to the height of twelve or thirteen thousand feet, for probably so high is the summit of Ætna. ”

“ The pyramidal shadow of the mountain reached across the whole island, and far into the sea on the other side. I counted from hence forty-four little mountains (little I call them in comparison of their mother Etna, though they would appear great any where else) in the middle region on the Catania side, and many others on the other side of the mountain, all of a conical form, and each having its crater; many with timber trees flourishing both within and without their craters. ”

“ Mount Etna was in activity as lately as 1865; but a previous eruption in 1852 was of greater violence. It began, as usual, with hollow underground rumblings, and the ascent of dense columns of vapour, mingled with dust and ashes, high into the air. These were speedily whirled into enormous eddies by fierce whirlwinds. Two new mouths were formed on the side of the mountain, and these vomited forth immense streams of lava, which rushed with the vehemence of a torrent down the steep. ”

“ The summit merely serves as a vent through which the vapors and gases make their escape. The natural boundaries of Ætna are the Alcantara and Simeto rivers on the north, west, and south, and the sea on the east.
The most luxurious fertility characterizes the gradual slopes near the base, the decomposed volcanic soil being almost entirely covered with olives, figs, grapes, and prickly pears. Higher up is the timber zone. Formerly there was a [Pg 102] dense forest belt between the zone of cultivated land and the tore of cinders and snow ”

“ At the summit of Etna we have left one-third of the atmosphere beneath us, and the air is now pressing upon the surface of the earth with a weight of ten pounds on the square inch, instead of the usual fifteen pounds experienced at the level of the sea. In looking towards the base of the mountain we are consequently looking from a rarer to a denser medium; and it is a law of optics, that when light passes from a denser to a rarer medium it is refracted away from the perpendicular, and thus the object, from which it emanates, appears raised, and nearer to us than it really is. ”

“ Under Mount Etna he lies,
It is slumber, it is not death;
For he struggles at times to arise,
And above him the lurid skies
Are hot with his fiery breath.
The crags are piled on his breast,
The earth is heaped on his head ”

“ As the lavas of Etna are very commonly fifteen and twenty miles in length, six or seven in breadth, and fifty feet or more in depth; you may judge, Sir, of the prodigious quantities of matter emitted in a great eruption of this mountain, and of the vast cavities there must necessarily be within its bowels. The most extensive lavas of Vesuvius do not exceed seven miles in length. The operations of nature on the one mountain and the other are certainly the same ”

“ Till now, the ascent had been so gradual (for the top of Etna is not less than thirty miles from Catania, from whence the ascent begins) as not to have been the least fatiguing; and if it had not been for the snow, we might have rode upon our mules to the very foot of the little mountain, higher than which the Canon our guide had never been: but as I saw that this little mountain was composed in the same manner as the top of Vesuvius, which, notwithstanding the smoak issuing from every pore, is solid and firm, I made no scruple of going up to the edge of the crater ”

“ Everywhere cinders, and nothing but cinders. Ætna is a mountain of dust and ashes. The beds of lava are equally cinders in appearance. If we consider one of these as a fluid, moving mass, half a mile wide, and 20 or 30 feet thick, it is a sublime and terrible object, but the rough, naked plain which remains, is merely ugly; and the bare, rocky bank, not presenting any unbroken mass even in proportion to its trifling elevation, is hardly of sufficient consequence to form a feature in the landscape. Ætna is a volcano, and it has no interest but what it derives from this character. ”

“ The cone of Etna is, in a right line, about a mile in ascent. The crater is about a mile and a half in circumference; and from the inner part of this, a column of smoke constantly rises; while the liquid fiery matter may be seen rolling, rising and falling within. As to the vastness and beauty of the prospect from the summit of Etna, all writers agree that it is probably unsurpassed. M. Houel was there at sunrise, when the horizon was perfectly clear, and the coast of Calabria, as seen in the distance, appeared to the eye misty, and undistinguishable from the sea. ”

“ The city of Catania was greatly injured by an eruption of Mount Etna in 1669, and almost destroyed by the earthquake of 1693, when most of the inhabitants were buried under the ruins of their houses and churches. But it rose rapidly, and now has a population of seventy thousand. It is regularly and handsomely built, and the streets are paved with the lava of Mount Etna. ”

“ Of course not," consulting the pages, "it's Taormina."
"Is that in Sicily?" he asked.
"Yes. Listen to what Mr. Watson says: 'I'm told it is the most beautiful spot in the world, which is the same thing you hear about most beautiful places. It is eight hundred feet above the Mediterranean and nestles peacefully in the shadow of Mount Etna.'"
"Etna!" cried Uncle John, with a start. "Isn't that another volcano?"
"To be sure," said Beth, the geographer. "Etna is the biggest volcano in the world."
"Does it spout?" he asked, anxiously.
"All the time, they say. But it is not usually dangerous." ”

“ It is accurate, and at the same time very clear and intelligible. By reference to the map it will be seen that from Capo di Schiso westward, to near Paterno, Etna is surrounded by sandstone hills; at the south we have recent clays, and, at intervals, chalk. A large triangular space having the two angles [Pg 118] at its base, respectively near Maletto and Aderno, and its apex at the great crater, is covered with new lava; while around Nicolosi there is volcanic sand. ”

“ Etna is the dominant feature of the landscape—Αιτνας ματερ εμά—πολυδένδρεος Αιτνας— than which no other mountain is more sublimely solitary, more worthy of Pindar's praise, 'The pillar of heaven, the nurse of sharp eternal snow.' It is Etna that gives its unique character of elevated beauty to this coast scenery, raising it to a grander and more tragic level than the landscape of the Cornice and the Bay of Naples. ”

“ From the observations I have made upon Mount Etna, Vesuvius, and its neighbourhood, [Pg 92] I dare say, that, after a careful examination, most mountains, that are or have been Volcanos, would be found to owe their existence to subterraneous fire; the direct reverse of what I find the commonly received opinion.
Nature, though varied, is certainly in general uniform in her operations; and I cannot conceive that two such considerable Volcanos as Etna and Vesuvius should have been formed otherwise than every other considerable Volcano of the known world. ”

“ Alas! art is extinct here; the wonders of nature alone remain; and it was with vast pleasure I observed those of mount Etna, whose flame appears very bright in the night many leagues off at sea, and fills the head with a thousand conjectures. However, I honour philosophy too much, to imagine it could turn that of Empedocles ”

“ Pindar in his first Pythian ode for Hiero of Ætna, winner in the chariot race in 474 B.C., exclaims:—He (Typhon) is fast bound by a pillar of the sky, even by snowy Ætna, nursing the whole year’s length her dazzling snow. Whereout pure springs of unapproachable fire are vomited from the inmost depth: in the daytime the lava streams pour forth a lurid rush of smoke, but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweepeth rocks with uproar to the wide, deep sea. ”