Page:Description of Mount Vesuvius with an account of its various eruptions.pdf/3



MOUNT VESUVIUS, NEAR NAPLES: ITS DESCRIP- TION AND VARIOUS ERUPTIONS.

The fluid lake that works below, Bitumen, sulphur, salt, and iron seam, Heaves up its boiling tide. The lab'ring mount Is torn with agonizing throes. At once, Forth from its side disparted, blazing pours A mighty river; burning in prone waves, That glimmer thro' the night, to yonder plain, Divided there a hundred torrent streams, Each ploughing up its bed, roll dreadful on, Resistless. Villages, and woods, and rocks, Fall flat before their sweep. The region round, Where myrtle walks and groves of golden fruit Rose fair; where harvest waved in all its prides And where the vineyard spread its purple store, Maturing into nectar; now despoiled Of herb, leaf, fruit and flower, from end to end Lies buried under fire, a glowing sea! MALLET. 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 par- ticular 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