Stramonium

“ It is plain that Strabo had a good idea of the nature of gravity, because he does not distinguish in any way an upper or a lower hemisphere, and declares that the quadrilateral on which the habitable world is situated may be any one of the four formed in this way. ”

“ At the time of Professor Judd's visit, the vapour-cloud was spread in a great horizontal stratum overshadowing the whole island; but it was clearly seen to be made up of a number of globular masses, each of which is a product of a distinct outburst of volcanic forces. Viewed at night-time, Stromboli presents a far more striking and singular spectacle. When watched from the deck of a vessel, a glow of red light is seen to make its appearance from time to time above the summit of the mountain; it may be observed to increase gradually in intensity, and then as gradually to die away. ”

“ Until the age of truth inaugurated by the conquests of modern astronomy, nobody on our planet, no poet, no philosopher, no thinker, had guessed the real grandeur of the proportions on which the universe is constructed. How small our Earth appears seen from the Saturnian system! It is barely seen, once in six months, as a small luminous dot near the sun, shining for a few minutes in the evening after sunset, or a few minutes in the morning before sunrise. ”

“ The authorities of Strabo are chiefly Greek, but his work is defective, from the imperfect notions which the ancients had of astronomy; so that the determination of the earth's figure by the measure of latitude and longitude, the essential foundations of geographical description, was unknown. The enormous strides, which all forms of physical science have made since the discovery of America, throw all ancient descriptions and investigations into the shade, and Strabo appears at as great disadvantage as Pliny or Ptolemy ”

“ I will not then pursue this subject which I have thus merely lightly touched upon, with the end in view of thereby demonstrating how greatly you would err, did you attach any importance to difficulties born of your terrestrial sensations, and to assure you that neither you nor any man upon the Earth could form even an approximate idea of the universe. What is earthly man but a mere pigmy! Ah! if you were but acquainted with the organisms which vibrate upon Mars or upon Uranus; if it had but been granted to you, to appreciate the senses in action, upon Venus and upon a ring of Saturn ”

“ He has been into every volcano in the globe, and descending by Vesuvius has been thrown up by Stromboli. He has lived more than a thousand years, and is still in the flower of his youth. He has had one hundred and forty sets of teeth one after another, and expects a new set next Christmas. His whole life has been spent in the service of mankind, and in doing good to his fellow-creatures; and having the experience of more than a thousand years, he cures more than a thousand diseases. ”

“ The Sun, which is the Centre of our planetary System, for aught we know, may be the Seat of glorious Inhabitants; or, as others conjecture, the Place of future Misery.
Upon the whole, the Salamander being of a mucous, slimy, and cold Body, will, like Ice, soon extinguish a little Fire, but will be as soon consum’d by a great Fire; therefore it was no Absurdity in Galen, when, as a sceptical Medicine, he recommended the Ashes of a Salamander.
The like Humidity is observable in Water-Lizards, especially if their Skins be prick’d: Yea, Frogs, Snails, White of Eggs, will soon quench a lesser Coal. ”

“ Now if we take a tall narrow vessel and fill it with - 20 - porridge or some similar substance of imperfect fluidity, we shall be able, by placing it over a fire, to imitate very closely indeed the appearances presented in the crater of Stromboli. As the temperature of the mass rises, steam is generated within it, and in the efforts of this steam to escape, the substance is set in violent movement. These movements of the mass are partly rotatory and partly vertical in their direction ”

“ It was in Stromboli that Æolus held bound the luctantes ventos tempestatesque sonoras. Without doubt, at the time of the song of Æneas, and when Stromboli was called Strongyle, the island was not known for what it really is, and hid within its depths the boiling masses and periodical ejaculations which make this volcano the most obliging one in the world. In sooth, you know what to expect from Stromboli: it is not like Vesuvius or Etna, which make the traveller wait sometimes three, five or even ten years for a poor little eruption. ”

“ The bright red would become dull, the dull red grow black, the glare of light above the cone contract for a little while and then burst out again. Yet men lived upon the slope of Stromboli, even as Englishmen—the thought flashed into his mind—lived in India, recognising the peril and going quietly about their work. There was always that glare of menacing light over the hill-districts of India as above the crater of Stromboli, now contracting, now expanding and casting its molten stream down towards the plains. ”

“ Then when that dead sun, according to the impact theory, blunders across the path of another sun, dead and blind like himself, its time will come. The result of that impact will be a new star nebula, with all its weary history before it; a history of suffering, in which a million years will not be long enough to write a single page.
"Here we have a scientific parallel to the hell of superstition which may account for the instinctive origin of the smoking flax and the fire which shall never be quenched. We know [91] that the atoms of which the human body is built up are atoms of matter. ”

“ The description of places belongs to Strabo, whose work was accepted as the text-book of the science till the fifteenth century, for in his day the Roman empire had been well surveyed. He maintained that the earth is spherical, and established the terms longitude and latitude, which Eratosthenes had introduced, and computed the earth to be one hundred and eighty thousand stadia in circumference, and a degree to be five hundred stadia in length, or sixty-two and a-half Roman miles. ”

“ What the ancients used to signify when they used the word stauros, can easily be seen by referring to either the Iliad or the Odyssey.1
It will there be found to clearly signify an ordinary pole or stake without any cross-bar. And it is as thus signifying a single piece of wood that the word in question is used throughout the old Greek classics.2
The stauros used as an instrument of execution was (1) a small pointed pole or stake used for thrusting through the body, so as to pin the latter to the earth, or otherwise render death inevitable ”

“ In plain terms, it means cross-eyed; and doubtless Strabo obtained his name from having this defect in his eyes. Whether any of his family were called so before him is not known. He studied with various learned men in Greece, Rome, and Alexandria. It does not appear that he had any occupation, but devoted all his time to study and travel. He wrote forty-seven books, and those on geography were very valuable; for he wrote from his own observation, though sometimes he is very full, at others very meagre. He is regarded as by no means the equal of Herodotus. ”

“ In the existence of high temperatures beneath the earth's surface, and the presence in the same regions of imprisoned water capable of passing into the highly elastic gas which we call steam, we have a cause fully competent to produce all the phenomena which we have described as occurring at Stromboli. ”

“ The mountain is built up of ashes, slag, and scoriæ, to a height of (as already stated) over 3000 feet above the surface of the sea; but, as Professor Judd observes, this by no means gives a just idea of its vast bulk. Soundings in the sea surrounding the island show that the bottom gradually shelves around the shores to a depth of nearly 600 fathoms, so that Stromboli is a great conical mass of cinders and slaggy materials, [Pg 73] having a height above its floor of about 6600 feet, and a base the diameter of which exceeds four miles. ”

“ So that with more justice could it be said of the impious men of our age than of Salmoneus of ancient days, that they had snatched lightning from Jupiter and wrested it from his hands. Nay, rather there has been sent from the infernal regions to the earth this force for the destruction of men, so that Death may snatch to himself as many as possible by one stroke. ”

“ This length extends from the extremity of India to that of Iberia, and the breadth from the parallel of Ethiopia to that of Ierne.
That the earth is an island, Strabo considers to be proved by the testimony of our senses. For wherever men have reached to the extremities of the earth they have found the sea, and for regions where this has not been verified it is established by reasoning. Those who have retraced their steps have not done so because their passage was barred by any continent, but because their supplies have run short, and they were afraid of the solitude ”

“ I believe the crystal on the mast in Mars and the crystal egg of Mr Cave’s to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way en rapport, and we both believe further that the terrestrial crystal must have been—possibly at some remote date—sent hither from that planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs. Possibly the fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on our globe. No theory of hallucination suffices for the facts. ”

“ My son, I do not wish to injure you by believing that, after our conversation on the Isle of Swans, you still doubt of the existence of Sylphs and Salamanders, who are as real as men and perhaps more so, if one measures reality by the duration of the appearances by which it is displayed, their existence being very much longer than ours. Salamanders range from century to century in unalterable youth; some of them have seen Noah, Moses and Pythagoras. The wealth of their recollections and the freshness of their memory render their conversation attractive to the utmost. ”

“ Stratonoff considers to be an agglomeration of immense condensations, or stellar clouds, which are scattered round the region of the galactic equator. These clouds, or masses of stars, sometimes leave spaces between them, and sometimes they overlap, and in this way he accounts for the great rifts, like the Coal Sack, which allow us to see through this great [Pg 321] circle of light. He finds other condensations of stars; the nearest is one of which our sun is a member, chiefly composed of stars of the higher magnitudes which “thin out rapidly as the Milky Way is approached.” ”

“ Volcanic phenomena can be studied to great advantage in Stromboli, whose crater, the edge of which is easily accessible, is in a state of constant moderate action, and can be watched for hours together without having the judgment warped either by an excited imagination or the sense of danger. ”

“ Democritus, a concourse of several stars; Aristotle, a collection of exhalations which had become dry and inflamed; Strabo, that they are the splendour of a star enveloped in a cloud; Heracletes of Pontus, an elevated cloud which gave out much light; Epigenes, some terrestrial matter that had caught fire, and was agitated by the wind; Bœcius, part of the air, coloured; Anaxagoras, sparks fallen from the elementary fire; Xenophanes, a motion and spreading out of clouds which caught [Pg 356] fire ”

“ Let us now draw near and examine this wonderful phenomenon of a mountain which seemingly ever burns with fire, and yet is not consumed. The general form of the Island of Stromboli will be gathered from an inspection of the plan, fig. 2, which is copied from a map published by the Italian Government. When we land upon the island, we find that it is entirely built up of such materials as we know to be ejected - 12 - from volcanoes; indeed, it resembles on a gigantic scale the surroundings of an iron furnace, with its heaps of cinders and masses of slag. ”

“ Suddenly, in that still desert, a star shone forth, and wound its way towards the earth. She spread her arms in transport, and thought the angel of rest was rushing towards her. Alas! the star passed away, but she did not. “Not yet? Do I not die yet, All-merciful One?” sighed poor Rosamond.
In the east a cloud arose,—it passed over the moon, sailed in loneliness across the clear sky, and stood over the most agonised heart upon earth. She threw back her head, so as to face the cloud, and said to the lightning, “Strike this head, and release my heart!” ”

“ The crater of Stromboli is formed like a vast funnel, from the bottom and the centre of which is an opening through which a man can enter a little way, and which communicates with the internal furnace of the mountain; it is through this opening, resembling the mouth of a canon, that the shower of projectiles darts forth, which, falling [Pg 300] again into the crater, sweeps with it down the inclined slope of stones the cinders and lava that, rolling to the bottom, block up that funnel. ”

“ Who the Virgin was, however, none but the initiated ever presumed to investigate, the practice observed in respect to her, being the same as that which influenced the other ordinances of antiquity: and which made Strabo himself declare, that “all that can be said concerning the gods must be by the exposition of old opinions and fables; it being the custom of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their thoughts and discourses concerning nature, which are, therefore, not easily explained.” ”