the perfect darkness beneath. No sound issues from this darkness.
There are only exhaled slightly sulphurous white vapours, chiefly
steam. The dismal aspect of this black and silent gulf, in which
our view was lost--its dark moist sides, along which crept, in a
languid and monotonous manner, long flakes of vapour of a sombre
gray--the great crater to which this narrow gulf is attached, with
its confused heap of diverse substances, coloured yellow, gray,
red, like the image of chaos--all presented around us an aspect
quite funereal and sepulchral."

The French geologist, in having escaped from his visit to the
crater with nothing worse than a fit of the vapours, came off
better than Empedocles, the Sicilian philosopher, in the days of
old: for, as the story goes, this inquisitive sage, being very
anxious to have a peep into the crater, and venturing too near,
toppled in altogether, and nothing more was seen of him, except one
of his sandals, which was vomited up by the volcano--thus conveying
to his friends an intimation of the manner of his death.

Some incredulous persons allege that this story has no better
foundation than the fable of the poets, that the giant Enceladus,
son of Titan and Terra, having offended Jupiter, the infuriated god
first felled him with a thunderbolt, and then put Mount Etna as a
sort of extinguisher on the top of him--his restlessness underneath
fully accounting for all the commotions of the mountain.

Soon after the eruption which took place towards the end of January
1865, the craters then opened were visited by M. Fouque, a French
geologist. At the time of his visit, 10th March, they were seven in
number, and he thus describes their modes of action:--