Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/651

Rh ETNA G27 ETNA. Mount Etna, one of the most celebrated volcanoes in the world, is situated on the eastern sea-board of Sicily. Its position was first accurately determined in 1314 by Captain Smyth, who found the longitude of the highest bifid peak of the great crater to be 15 east of Greenwich, and the latitude 37 43 31&quot; N. These results have been very generally accepted by later writers. There can be no doubt that the name of Etna Atrva is derived from ai(9w, to burn. This name was known to Hesiod. The more modern name Hongibello, by which the mountain is still commonly known to the Sicilians, is a combination of the Italian monte and the Arabic gibd. During the Saracenic occupation of Sicily (827-1090), Etna was called Gibel Uttamat, the mountain of fire; and the second portion of Mongibdlo is a relic of the Arabic name. Historical References and Descriptions. Etna is often alluded to by classical writers. By the poets it was feigned to be the prison of the giant Enceladus or Typhon, by others the forge of Hephsestus. The flames proceeded from the breath of Enceladus, the thunderous noises of the mountain were his groans, and when he turned upon his side, earthquakes shook the island. Pindar (522-442 B.C.), in his first Pythian Ode, for Hiero of JStna, winner in the chariot race in 474 B.C., exclaims: &quot;He (Typhon) is fast bound by a pillar of the sky, even by snowy Etna, nursing the whole year s length her dazzling snow. Whereout pure springs of unapproach able fire are vomited from the inmost depth : in the day time the lava streams pour forth a lurid rush of smoke, but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweepeth rocks with uproar to the wide deep sea.&quot; J^schylus (525-456 B.C.) speaks also of the &quot;mighty Typhon&quot; (Prom. Vinctw). Thucydides (471-402 B.C.) alludes in the last lines of his third book to three early eruptions of the mountain. Many other early writers speak of Etna, among them Theocritus, Virgil, Ovid, Livy, Seneca, Lucan, Petronius, Dion Cassius, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Lucilius junior. While the poets on the one hand had invested Etna with various supernatural attributes, and had made it the prison of a chained giant, and the workshop of a swart god, Lucretius and others endeavoured to show that the erup tions and other phenomena of the mountain could be ex plained by the ordinary operations of nature. These ideas were developed by Lucilius junior (the friend of Seneca, to whom he addressed his Quaestiones Natnrales)w. a poem consisting of 640 Latin hexameters, entitled Etna. Many of the myths developed by the earlier poets had their home upon the very sides of Etna : Demeter, torch in hand, seeking Persephone; Acis and Galatea; Polyphemus and the Cyclops. If we pass to more modern times we find mention of Etna by Dante, Petrarch, Cardinal Bembo, and other Middle Age writers. In 1541 Fazzello made an ascent of the mountain, which he briefly describes in the fourth chapter (entitled &quot; De ^Etna Monte et ejus ignibus&quot;) of his work De Rtbus S culis. He also gives a brief history of the mountain. In 1591 Antonio Filoteo, who was born on Etna, published a work in Venice, entitled jEtnce Topographia, Incendioriim jEtiiceorum Historic/, in which he describes an eruption which he witnessed in 1536. He asserts that the mountain was then (as now) divided into three &quot; regions &quot; the first very arid, rugged, uneven, and full of broken rocks; the second covered with forests; and the third cultivated in the ordinary manner. Of the height he says, &quot; Ascensum triginta circiter millia pasfuium ad plus habet.&quot; The great eruption of 1669 was described at length by the naturalist Borelli in the year of its occurrence. It also formed the subject of a paper in the Philosophical Tran- actions : and a brief account of it was given by the earl of Winchelsea, English ambassador at Constantinople, who was , returning home by way of the Straits of Messina at the time. As the eruption of 1669 was the most considerable eruption of modern times, it attracted a good deal of atten tion, and was described by several eye-witnesses. A map in the Bibliotheque Nationals in Paris gives an imaginary view of the mountain during this eruption. It is the ear liest map of the mountain which the library possesses, and is entitled &quot; Plan du Mont Etna, commumement dit Mont Gibel, en 1 Isle de Scicille, et de t jncedie arrive par un tix-blement de terre, le 8 me Mars dernier 1669.&quot; Further, in the sacristy of the cathedral of Catania there is a curious wall-painting, which represents broad red streams of lava descending from the Monti Rossi and overwhelming the city. Towards the middle of the next century the mountain was ascended and described by Count D Orville (1727), by the German Riedesel in 1767, and by Sir William Hamil ton, the English ambassador at Naples, in 1769. During the twenty succeeding years it was described by Borch, Swinbourne, Denon, Spallanzaui, Faujas de Saint-Fond, and HoueL The last, in his Voyage pittoresque dans les Deux Sidles, 1782-1786, has given a capital account of the mountain, accompanied by some excellent engravings. In 1776 a clever Irishman named Patrick Brydone published two volumes of a Tour in Sicily and Malta, in which he describes at some length his ascent of Etna, and he further states as many facts concerning the history of the mountain as he could collect from the Canon Recuperc and others. His account is more complete than any which had appeared in English up to that time, and he is fre quently quoted in every account of the mountain with which we have met. It was reserved, however, for the Abate Francesco Ferrara, professor of physical science in the university of Catania, to write the first history of Etna which has any claim to com pleteness. It is entitled Descrizione dell Etna, con la storia delle eruzioni e U calalogo del prodotti. The first edition appeared in 1793, and a second was struck off at Palermo in 1818. It is illustrated by a map, and by some rather rough engravings. The author was born upon the mountain, and was witness to some of its grandest phenomena. His work has evidently been to a great extent a labour of love. It is full of personal observations, while it embodies the principal results of other observers, and furnishes the foundation of all that has since been written about Etna. During 1814-16 Captain Smyth, acting under the direction of the lords of the Admiralty, made a survey of the coast of Sicily, and carefully deter mined the latitude and longitude of Etna; he also accu rately measured the height and examined the surroundings of the mountain. His results were published in 1824, and are still oftea quoted as the most accurate which exist. In 1824 Dr Giuseppe Gemellaro, who lived all his life upon Etna, and made it his constant study, published an &quot; Historical and Topographical Map of the Eruptions of Etna from the Era of the Sicani to the year 1824.&quot; In it he shows the extent of the three regions, Coltivata, Selvosa, and Deserta; he lays down the places of the minor cones to the number of seventy-four?; and he traces the course of the various lava streams which have flowed from them and from the great crater. About 1847 Baron Sartorius von Waltershausen commenced a minute survey, and a com plete examination of the mountain, both geologically and otherwise. He was assisted by a brother professor, and by two Sicilians, and their labours resulted in the production of a fine atlas of Etna, which even in its incomplete form costs .12. Owing to the death of Von Waltershausen, thfl work was never quite completed, but, as it is, it supplies the most exhaustive history of any one mountain on the face of the earth. Sir Charles Lyell visited Etna three times (in 1824, 1857, 1858), and he has embodied the results of his