activity with intervals of rest. In A.D. 472, it threw out so great
a quantity of ashes, that they overspread all Europe, and filled
even Constantinople with alarm. In A.D. 1036 occurred the first
eruption in which there was any ejection of lava. This eruption was
followed by five others, the last of which occurred in 1500. To
these succeeded a long rest of about a hundred and thirty years,
during which the mountain had again become covered with gardens and
vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater had become
clothed with shrubbery.

In this interval, however, there was an extraordinary eruption--not
of Vesuvius itself, but at no great distance from it, in the Bay of
Baiae, on the opposite shore of the Bay of Naples. The whole of
this neighbourhood is a volcanic country, and was anciently named
the Phlegraean Fields. It contains a crater in a state of subdued
activity, called the Solfatara; an extinct volcano having a large
crater called Monte Barbaro; and Lake Avernus, also supposed to be
an extinct volcanic crater. Between Monte Barbaro and the sea,
there was formerly a fiat piece of ground bordering on the Lucrine
Lake, which is separated from the Bay of Baiae by a narrow strip of
shingle. On the 29th of September 1538, the flat piece of ground
above mentioned became the scene of a great eruption, which
resulted in the throwing up of a new elevation to the height of
four hundred and thirteen feet, and with a circumference of eight
thousand feet. It received the name of Monte Nuovo, and is now
covered with a luxuriant vegetation.

In 1631 there was another dreadful eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
which covered with lava most of the villages at the foot of the
mountain. To add to the calamity, torrents of boiling water were,