Mount Vesuvius

“ In the beginning of eruptions, Volcanos frequently throw up water mixed with the ashes. Vesuvius did so in the eruption of 1631, according to the testimony of many contemporary writers. The same circumstance happened in 1669, according to the account of Ignazzio Sorrentino, who, by his history of Mount Vesuvius, printed at Naples in 1734, has shewn himself to have been a very accurate observer of the phænomena of the Volcano, for many years that he lived at Torre del Greco, situated at the foot of it. ”

“ It is, that we are apt to judge of the great operations of Nature on too confined a plan. When first I came to Naples, my whole attention, with respect to natural history, was confined to Mount [Pg 162] Vesuvius, and the wonderful phænomena attending a burning mountain: but, in proportion as I began to perceive the evident marks of the same operation having been carried on in the different parts above described, and likewise in Sicily in a greater degree, I looked upon Mount Vesuvius only as a spot on which Nature was at present active ”

“ While Mount Vesuvius continued active volumes of cinders and ashes emitted from the volcano fell upon the buildings and streets driving the inhabitants of the city into a condition bordering on frenzy. All night people roamed the streets praying and crying that they might be spared. ”

“ As to the dispute among geologists on the question whether the cones on the top of Vesuvius were made by eruption or upheaval, he came to the same conclusion as Lyell, that they were craters of eruption. It was afterwards estimated that during the eruption which was in progress at the time of Professor Tyndall’s visit, Mount Vesuvius emitted about 20,000,000 cubic feet of lava.
His travels and explorations in another part of the world where Nature displays her operations on a grand scale, and where personal achievement is the only recognised title to fame, were still more memorable. ”

“ The ancients, in describing Vesuvius, never mention two mountains. Strabo, Dio, Vitruvius, all agree, that Vesuvius, in their time, shewed signs of having formerly erupted [33] , and the first compares the [Pg 112] crater on its top to an amphitheatre. The mountain now called Somma was, I believe, that which the ancients called Vesuvius: its outside form is conical; its inside, instead of an amphitheatre, is now like a great theatre. I suppose the eruption in Pliny's time to have thrown down that part of the cone next the sea, which would naturally have left it in its present state ”

“ Few persons are ignorant of the fact that it opened—after a period of quiescence extending beyond the memory of living man—in the year 79 of our era. This eruption cost the elder Pliny his life, who fell a sacrifice to his desire to witness one of the most imposing of natural phenomena. After many mutations the present crater of Vesuvius consists of a cone, surrounded on the side opposite the sea by a semicircular crest, composed of pumiceous matter, foreign to Vesuvius properly speaking, for we believe that Mount Vesuvius was originally the mountain to which the name of Somma is now given. ”

“ On April 21st—accompanied by Mr. Gray, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church, who kindly acted as our guide—after driving through Naples, Portici, and Resina, we [128] slowly ascended the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, which is about 30 miles in circumference at its base; and, whilst going up the steep incline, marked a gradual decrease of vegetation, until great lava fields, consisting of immense black boulders, and enormous quantities of lava, cooled, and hardened into the most fantastic shapes, were reached. ”

“ Little of the matter that has issued from Vesuvius since that time, has reached these parts: but I must observe, that the pavement of the streets of Pompeii is of lava; nay, under the foundation of the town, there is a deep stratum of lava and burnt matter. These circumstances, with many others that will be related hereafter, prove, beyond a doubt, that there have been eruptions of Vesuvius previous to that of the year 79, which is the first recorded by history.
The growth of soil by time is easily accounted for ”

“ I shall only add, that Vesuvius is quiet at present, though very hot at top, where there is a deposition of boiling sulphur. The lava that ran in the Fossa Grande during the last eruption, and is at least two hundred feet thick, is not yet cool; a stick, put into its crevices, takes fire immediately. On the sides of the crevices are fine crystalline salts: as they are the pure salts, which exhale from the lava that has no communication with the interiour of the mountain, they may perhaps indicate the composition of the lava. ”

“ A rumbling, and afterwards a roaring noise is heard within, and prodigious quantities of stones and minerals burnt into masses (scoriæ) are thrown out of the crater, sometimes to a great distance. The hot ashes from Mount Vesuvius have often been seen upon the roofs of the houses of Naples, from which it is six miles distant. Streams of lava run down the sides of the mountain during the time of an eruption, destroying everything in their way, and overwhelm the houses and vineyards which are in the neighbourhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Abbate Giulio Cesare Bracini, in his account of the eruption of Vesuvius, in 1631, says, that the height of the column of smoak and ashes, taken from Naples by a quadrant, was upwards of thirty miles. Though such uncertain calculations demand but little attention; yet, by what I have seen, I am convinced, that in great eruptions the ashes are sent up to so great a height as to meet with extraordinary currents of air, which is the most probable way of accounting for their having been carried to so great a distance in a few hours. ”

“ This fracture is occasioned by the lava's forcing its way out, which operation I have described in my account of the last eruption of Vesuvius. Whenever I shall meet with a mountain, in any part of the world, whose form is regularly conical, with a hollow crater on its top, and one side broken, I shall be apt to decide such a mountain's having been formed by an eruption; as both on Etna and Vesuvius the mountains formed by explosion are without exception according to this description. ”

“ Nicola, on which there is at present a convent of hermits, was called by the ancients Epomeus; it is as high, if not higher, than Vesuvius, and appears to me to be a section of the cone of the ancient and principal Volcano of the island, its composition being all tufa or lava. The cells of the convent abovementioned are cut out of the mountain itself; and there you see plainly that its composition no way differs from the matter that covers Herculaneum, and forms the Monte Nuovo. ”

“ As it is not foreign to my purpose, and will serve to shew how greatly they are mistaken, who place the seat of the fire in the centre, or towards the top, of a Volcano; I will give you a curious description of the state of the crater of Vesuvius, after having been free from eruption 492 years, as related by Bracini, who descended into it not long before the eruption of [Pg 110] 1631: "The crater was five miles in circumference, and about a thousand paces deep; its sides were covered with brush wood, and at the bottom there was a plain on which cattle grazed. ”

“ The inside of the crater, which is incrusted with salts and sulphurs like that of Vesuvius, is in the form of an inverted hollow cone, and its depth nearly answers to the height of the little mountain that crowns the great Volcano. The smoak, issuing abundantly from the sides and bottom, prevented our seeing quite down ”

“ The lava bed of Mount Ætna maintains a normal level of 7000 feet, while Vesuvius calmly reposes at a little more than one half that altitude. On the other hand, according to Prof. Whitney, of the Pacific Survey, Mount Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, bubbles up to the enormous height of 17,000 feet. It cannot be contended that the crater of Vesuvius is not a true nucleatic orifice, because I have demonstrated that the molten bed regularly rises and falls like the tides of the ocean when controlled by the moon. ”

“ The quantity of matter thrown out by this eruption is greater than that of the last in the year 1760; but the damage [Pg 14] to the cultivated lands is not so considerable, owing to its having spread itself much more, and its source being at least three miles higher up. This eruption seems now to have exhausted itself; and I expect in a few days to see Vesuvius restored to its former tranquillity.
Mount Etna in Sicily broke out on the 27th of April; and made a lava, in two branches, at least six miles in length, and a mile in breadth ”

“ It would be very fortunate for students of antiquity if similar disasters had happened to cities in other ancient civilized lands, however unfortunate it might have been to their inhabitants. But doubtless we are better off without knowledge gained from ruins thus produced.
CHAPTER XXII. Eruptions of Vesuvius, Etna and Stromboli.
Mount Vesuvius is of especial interest as being the only active volcano on the continent of Europe—all others of that region being on the islands of the Mediterranean—and for the famous ancient eruption described in the last chapter. ”

“ Vesuvius is a dangerous thing, but very beautiful. It stands tall and pointed and graceful against a lovely sky. Its little cloud waves from it like a plume. At night the mountain is swallowed by the dark. But the red rivers down its slopes glare in the sky. It is beautiful and terrible like a tiger. Thousands of people have loved it. They have climbed it and looked down its crater. It is like looking into the heart of the earth. One of these travelers wrote of his visit in 1793. He said:
“For many days Vesuvius has been in action. I have watched it from Naples. ”

“ The stoutest heart will quake at the spectacle which he beholds for the first time, and the surroundings are not calculated to diminish the feelings of terror.
During the week I made my ascent a rumour had{199} been published to the effect that an Englishman who made the ascent of Vesuvius without a guide had been lost. It is quite possible to be lost on the summit of Vesuvius. Enveloped in smoke and steam, you may easily, if you are incautious, become asphyxiated and fall into the crater of the raging volcano, never to be heard of again. ”

“ The huge form of the volcano forever stands before him. The long pennon of smoke from its crater forever floats out triumphantly in the air. Not in the landscape only, but in all the picture-shops. In these establishments they really seem to deal in nothing but prints and paintings of Vesuvius. ”

“ While this went on the mountain remained comparatively quiet, there being no explosions, though a huge cloud of volcanic ash and cinders rose high in the air until it hung over the crater in the shape of an enormous pine tree, while from it a shower of dust and sand, soon to become terrible, began to descend upon the surrounding fields and towns.
Dangerous as is Vesuvius at any time, the people of the vicinity dare its perils for the allurement of its fertile soil. ”

“ One of their excursions, however, it is necessary, for the sake of our narrative, to give some account of—it is that to Vesuvius. Perhaps there are few travellers who have not recorded the day they visited the burning mountain as amongst the most remarkable of their lives. The extreme beauty of the views as you ascend, the strange desolation immediately around, and the grand spectacle that awaits you on the summit, so vary and sustain the interest, that every emotion which nature is capable of producing, seems to have been crowded into one spot, and one hour. ”

“ As one mounts, the city drops away, and the long semicircle of hills behind it rises into sight, green rounded hills, bearing on their summits palms which stand out sharp and dark against the sky. With every convolution of the stairs one sees more and more of the great plain out of which Vesuvius rises,—the Campagna Felice, a purple flat, stretching from the base of the 19 volcano as far as that mountain chain which marks the limit of its power. Out of the mountains comes a fresh cool wind, and all the city sparkles in the sun. ”

“ Vesuvius consists of two distinct portions. On the northern side a lofty semicircular cliff, reaching a height of 3714 ft., half encircles the present active cone, and descends in long slopes towards the plains below. This precipice, known as Monte Somma, forms the wall of an ancient prehistoric crater of vastly greater size than that of the present volcano. The continuation of the same wall round its southern half has been in great measure obliterated by the operations of the modern vent, which has built a younger cone upon it, and is gradually filling up the hollow of the prehistoric crater. ”