Page:Awful phenomena of nature -- burning mountains.pdf/3

 are also numerous volcanoes in Mexico and Peru, especially Pichincha and Cotopaxi. The subterraneous fires which are continually kept up in an open volcano, depend in general on sulphureous combination and decomposition, like the heating of a heap of wet pyrites, or the union of sulphur and iron filings; but in other cases they approach more nearly to the nature of common fires. A mountain of coal has been burning in Siberia for almost a century, and must probably have undermined, in some degree, the neighbouring country.

The two most remarkable valcanoes are those of Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius; and the following is an account of a recent eruption of the latter.

This celebrated volcano, which has for so many ages attracted the attention of mankind, and the desolating eruptions of which have been so often and so fatally experienced, is distant, in an eastern direction, about seven miles from Naples. It rises, insulated upon a vast and well cultivated plain, presenting two summits on the same base; in which particular it resembles Mount Parnassus. One of these, La Somma, is generally agreed to have been the Vesuvius of Strabo and the ancients; the other, having the greatest elevation, is the mouth of the volcano, which almost