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Show 338 MOUERN ERUPTIONS cone rose in succession,-and that many years, and often centuries of repose intervened between each eruption-geologists seem to have conjectured that the whole group sprung up from the ground at once, like the soldiers of Cadmus when he sowed the dragon,s teeth. As well might they endeavour to persuade us that on these Phlegrrean Fields, as the poets feigned, the giants warred with Jove, ere yet the puny race of mortals were in being. For nearly a century after the birth of Monte N uovo, Ve-suvius still continued in a state of tranquillity. There had then been no violent eruption for four hundred and ninety-two years; and it appears that the crater was then exactly in the condition of the present extinct volcano of Astroni, near Naples. Bracini, who visited Vesuvius not long before the eruption of 1631, gives the following interesting description of the interior. "The crater was five miles in circumference, and about a thousand paces deep; its sides were covered with brushwood, and at the bottom there was a plain on which cattle grazed. In the woody parts wild-boars frequently harboured. In one part of the plain, covered with ashes, were three small pools, one filled with hot and bitter water, another salter than the sea, and a third hot but tasteless * ." But at length these forests and grassy plains were suddenly consumed -blown into the air, and their ashes scattered to the winds. In December, 1631, seven streams of lava poured at once from the crater, and overflowed several villages on the flanks and at the foot of the mountain. Re_sina, partly built over the ancient site of Herculaneum, was consumed by the fiery torrent. Great floods of mud were as destructive as the lava itself, as often happens during these catastrophes; for such is the violence of rains produced by the evolution of aqueous vapour, that torrents of water descend the cone, and, becoming charged with impalpable volcanic dust, roll along loose ashes, acquiring such consistency as to deserve their ordinary appellation of "aque-ous lavas." A' brief period of repose ensued, which lasted only until the year 1666, from which time to the present there has * Hamilton's Campi Phlegrrei, folio, vol. i., p. 62; and Brieslok, Campanie, tome i., p.l86. OF VESUVIUs. 339 been a constant series of erup t'I Ons W.i tl I . rest exceedino- ten y D . ' 1 rare Y an mtcrval of o ears. urmg tl th irregular volcanic aCTcncy h lese ree centuries no d . · o as convulsed other · t · 1 · 1strwt. Brieslak remarked th . pom s m t us had occurred in the Bay of N alt su.ch Irregular convulsions .£> ap es, m every second t as, lOr example, the eruption of the S 1:£ . cen ury, of the lava of Arso in Isch' . 0h atara m the twelfth, M · ' Ia, m t e fom·tce th d f onte N uovo m the sixteenth. but tl . h n ' an o an exception to this rule and ,th' le eig teenth has formed ' 1s seems account d {i b unp·r edc edented number of erupti'ons of Ve suvm. s e du o·r yt lt he pbe riO ; whereha s, when the new Yents opened , tl1 ere 11 ar dmag l walyast e~n'. asl wei ave seen, a long intermittance of activity in tile prmCipa vo cano. Z2 |
