The Eruption of Mount Etna.
The Mountain Threatens--The Signs Increase--We Leave Catania--Gardens
Among the Lava--Etna Labors--Aci Reale--The Groans of Etna--The
Eruption--Gigantic Tree of Smoke--Formation of the New Crater--We Lose
Sight of the Mountain--Arrival at Messina--Etna is Obscured--Departure.
-------"the shattered side
Of thundering Ætna, whose combustible
And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom." Milton.
Messina, Sicily, _Monday, August_ 23, 1852.
The noises of the festival had not ceased when I closed my letter at
midnight, on Friday last. I slept soundly through the night, but was
awakened before sunrise by my Sicilian landlord. "O, Excellenza! have you
heard the Mountain? He is going to break out again; may the holy Santa
Agatha protect us!" It is rather ill-timed on the part of the Mountain,
was my involuntary first thought, that he should choose for a new eruption
precisely the centennial festival of the only Saint who is supposed to
have any power over him. It shows a disregard of female influence not at
all suited to the present day, and I scarcely believe that he seriously
means it. Next came along the jabbering landlady: "I don't like his looks.
It was just so the last time. Come, Excellenza, you can see him from the
back terrace." The sun was not yet risen, but the east was bright with
his coming, and there was not a cloud in the sky. All the features of Etna
were sharply sculptured in the clear air. From the topmost cone, a thick
stream of white smoke was slowly puffed out at short intervals, and rolled
lazily down the eastern side. It had a heavy, languid character, and I
should have thought nothing of the appearance but for the alarm of my
hosts. It was like the slow fire of Earth's incense, burning on that grand
mountain altar.
I hurried off to the Post Office, to await the arrival of the diligence
from Palermo. The office is in the Strada Etnea, the main street of
Catania, which runs straight through the city, from the sea to the base of
the mountain, whose peak closes the long vista. The diligence was an hour
later than usual, and I passed the time in watching the smoke which
continued to increase in volume, and was mingled, from time to time, with
jets of inky blackness. The postilion said he had seen fires and heard
loud noises during the night. According to his account, the disturbances
commenced about midnight. I could not but envy my friend Cæsar, who was
probably at that moment on the summit, looking down into the seething
fires of the crater.
At last, we rolled out of Catania. There were in the diligence, besides
myself, two men and a woman, Sicilians of the secondary class. The road
followed the shore, over rugged tracts of lava, the different epochs of
which could be distinctly traced in the character of the vegetation. The
last great flow (of 1679) stood piled in long ridges of terrible
sterility, barely allowing the aloe and cactus to take root in the hollows
between. The older deposits were sufficiently decomposed to nourish the
olive and vine; but even here, the orchards were studded with pyramids of
the harder fragments, which are laboriously collected by the husbandmen.
In the few favored spots which have been untouched for so many ages that a
tolerable depth of soil has accumulated, the vegetation has all the
richness and brilliancy of tropical lands. The palm, orange, and
pomegranate thrive luxuriantly, and the vines almost break under their
heavy clusters. The villages are frequent and well built, and the hills
are studded, far and near, with the villas of rich proprietors, mostly
buildings of one story, with verandahs extending their whole length.
Looking up towards Etna, whose base the road encircles, the views are
gloriously rich and beautiful. On the other hand is the blue Mediterranean
and the irregular outline of the shore, here and there sending forth
promontories of lava, cooled by the waves into the most fantastic forms.
We had sot proceeded far before a new sign called my attention to the
mountain. Not only was there a perceptible jar or vibration in the earth,
but a dull, groaning sound, like the muttering of distant thunder, began
to be heard. The smoke increased in volume, and, as we advanced further to
the eastward, and much nearer to the great cone, I perceived that it
consisted of two jets, issuing from different mouths. A broad stream of
very dense white smoke still flowed over the lip of the topmost crater and
down the eastern side. As its breadth did not vary, and the edges were
distinctly defined, it was no doubt the sulphureous vapor rising from a
river of molten lava. Perhaps a thousand yards below, a much stronger
column of mingled black and white smoke gushed up, in regular beats or
pants, from a depression in the mountain side, between two small, extinct
cones. All this part of Etna was scarred with deep chasms, and in the
bottoms of those nearest the opening, I could see the red gleam of fire.
The air was perfectly still, and as yet there was no cloud in the sky.
When we stopped to change horses at the town of Aci Reale, I first felt
the violence of the tremor and the awful sternness of the sound. The smoke
by this time seemed to be gathering on the side towards Catania, and hung
in a dark mass about half-way down the mountain. Groups of the villagers
were gathered in the streets which looked upwards to Etna, and discussing
the chances of an eruption. "Ah," said an old peasant, "the Mountain knows
how to make himself respected. When he talks, everybody listens." The
sound was the most awful that ever met my ears. It was a hard, painful
moan, now and then fluttering like a suppressed sob, and had, at the same
time, an expression of threatening and of agony. It did not come from Etna
alone. It had no fixed location; it pervaded all space. It was in the air,
in the depths of the sea, in the earth under my feet--everywhere, in fact;
and as it continued to increase in violence, I experienced a sensation of
positive pain. The people looked anxious and alarmed, although they said
it was a good thing for all Sicily; that last year they had been in
constant fear from earthquakes, and that an eruption invariably left the
island quiet for several years. It is true that, during the past year,
parts of Sicily and Calabria have been visited with severe shocks,
occasioning much damage to property. A merchant of this city informed me
yesterday that his whole family had slept for two months in the vaults of
his warehouse, fearing that their residence might be shaken down in the
night.
As we rode along from Aci Reale to Taormina, all the rattling of the
diligence over the rough road could not drown the awful noise. There was a
strong smell of sulphur in the air, and the thick pants of smoke from the
lower crater continued to increase in strength. The sun was fierce and
hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a dazzling
whiteness. A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the diligence,
talking with the postillion. He had been up to the mountain, and was
taking his report to the Governor of the district. The heat of the day and
the continued tremor of the air lulled me into a sort of doze, when I was
suddenly aroused by a cry from the soldier and the stopping of the
diligence. At the same time, there was a terrific peal of sound, followed
by a jar which must have shaken the whole island. We looked up to Etna,
which was fortunately in full view before us. An immense mass of
snow-white smoke had burst up from the crater and was rising
perpendicularly into the air, its rounded volumes rapidly whirling one
over the other, yet urged with such impetus that they only rolled outwards
after they had ascended to an immense height. It might have been one
minute or five--for I was so entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I
lost the sense of time--but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent
were the effects of the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on
the summit of the mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and
shaped precisely like the Italian pine tree.
Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree. Its trunk of columned
smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the other, in
shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile before it sent
out its cloudy boughs. Then parting into a thousand streams, each of
which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke, rolling and waving in
the air, it stood in intense relief against the dark blue of the sky. Its
rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly white on one side, while, in the
shadowy depths of the branches, there was a constant play of brown,
yellow, and crimson tints, revealing the central shaft of fire. It was
like the tree celebrated in the Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother
of Harold Hardrada--that tree, whose roots pierced through the earth,
whose trunk was of the color of blood, and whose branches filled the
uttermost corners of the heavens.
This outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were
now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air, and
earth, and sea. And now, from the base of the tree, three white streams
slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls of which
played the flickering glow of the burning lava. The column of smoke and
flame was still hurled upwards, and the tree, after standing about ten
minutes--a new and awful revelation of the active forces of
Nature--gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved by a
light wind (the first that disturbed the dead calm of the day), bent over
to the eastward. We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last
arched over the strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the
distant Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way,
the sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle
of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn
between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and showers
of white ashes fell, from time to time. We were distant about twelve
miles, in a straight line, from the crater; but the air was so clear,
even under the shadow of the smoke, that I could distinctly trace the
downward movement of the rivers of lava.
This was the eruption, at last, to which all the phenomena of the morning
had been only preparatory. For the first time in ten years the depths of
Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at Malta, and
the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here, to his very base,
to witness a scene, the impression of which I shall never lose, to my
dying day. Although the eruption may continue and the mountain pour forth
fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot but think that the first
upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned forces, will not be equalled
in grandeur by any later spectacle.
After passing Taormina, our road led us under the hills of the coast, and
although I occasionally caught glimpses of Etna, and saw the reflection of
fires from the lava which was filling up his savage ravines, the smoke at
last encircled his waist, and he was then shut out of sight by the
intervening mountains. We lost a bolt in a deep valley opening on the sea,
and during our stoppage I could still hear the groans of the Mountain,
though farther off and less painful to the ear. As evening came on, the
beautiful hills of Calabria, with white towns and villages on their sides,
gleamed in the purple light of the setting sun. We drove around headland
after headland, till the strait opened, and we looked over the harbor of
Messina to Capo Faro, and the distant islands of the Tyrrhene Sea.
* * * * *
I leave this afternoon for Naples and Leghorn. I have lost already so much
time between Constantinople and this place, that I cannot give up ten
days more to Etna. Besides, I am so thoroughly satisfied with what I have
seen, that I fear no second view of the eruption could equal it. Etna
cannot be seen from here, nor from a nearer point than a mountain six or
eight miles distant. I tried last evening to get a horse and ride out to
it, in order to see the appearance of the eruption by night; but every
horse, mule and donkey in the place was engaged, except a miserable lame
mule, for which five dollars was demanded. However, the night happened to
be cloudy so that I could have seen nothing.
My passport is finally _en règle_. It has cost the labors of myself and an
able-bodied valet-de-place since yesterday morning, and the expenditure of
five dollars and a half, to accomplish this great work. I have just been
righteously abusing the Neapolitan Government to a native merchant whom,
from his name, I took to be a Frenchman, but as I am off in an hour or
two, hope to escape arrest. Perdition to all Tyranny!