Viewing page 194 of 285

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

78 ANNUAL REGISTER

from the sea, had been ruined by time or accident, and that the lake became part of the sea before the explosion of 1538.

If the above described eruption was terrible, that which formed the monte Barbaro (or Gauro, as it was formerly called), must have been dreadful indeed. It joins immediately to the new mountain, which in shape and composition it exactly resembles; but it is at least three times as considerable. Its crater cannot be less than six miles in circumference; the plain within the crater, one of the most fertile spots I ever saw, is about four miles in circumference; there is no entrance to this plain, but one on the east side of the mountain, made evidently by art; in this section you have an opportunity of seeing that the matter, of which the mountain is composed, is exactly similar to that of the monte Nuovo. It was this mountain that produced (as some authors have supposed) the celebrated Falernian wine of the ancients.

Cuma, allowed to have been the most ancient city of Italy, was built on an eminence, which is likewise composed of tufa, and may be naturally supposed a section of the cone formed by a very ancient explosion.

The lake of Avernus fills the bottom of the crater of a mountain, undoubtedly produced by explosion, and whose interior and exterior form, as well as the matter of which it is composed, exactly resemble the monte Barbaro and monte Nuovo. At that part of the basis of this mountain which is washed by the sea of the bay of Puzzole, the sand is still very hot, though constantly washed by the waves; and into the cone of the mountain, near this hot sand, a narrow passage of about 100 paces in length is cut, and leads to a fountain of boiling water, which, though brackish, boils fish and flesh without giving them any bad taste or quality, as I have experienced more than once. This place is called Nero's bath, and is still made use of for a sudatory, as it was by the ancients; the steam that rises from the hot fountain above mentioned, confined in the narrow subterraneous passage, soon produces a violent perspiration upon the patient who fits therein. This bath is reckoned a great specific in that distemper which is supposed to have made its appearance at Naples, before it spread its contagion over the other parts of Europe.

Virgil and other ancient authors say, that birds could not fly with safety over the lake of Avernus, but that they fell therein; a circumstance favouring my opinion that this was once the mouth of a volcano. The vapour of the sulphur and other minerals must undoubtedly have been more powerful the nearer we go back to the time of the explosion of the volcano; and I am convinced that there are still some remains of those vapours upon this lake, as I have observed there are very seldom any water fowl upon it; and that when they do go there, it is but for a short time, whilst all the other lakes in the neighbourhood are constantly covered with them, in the winter season. Upon mount Vesuvius, in the year 1766, during an eruption, when the air was impregnated with noxious vapours, I have myself picked up dead birds frequently.

The castle of Baïa stands upon a
considerable

For the YEAR 1772 79

considerable eminence, composed of the usual tufa and strata of pumice and ashes, from which I concluded I should find some remains of the craters from whence the matter issued; accordingly, having ascended the hill, I soon discovered two very visible craters, just behind the castle.

The lake called the Mare morto was also, most probably, the crater from whence issued the materials which formed the Promontory of Misenum, and the high grounds around this lake. Under the ruins of an ancient building near the point of Misenum, in a vault, there is a vapour, or mofete, exactly similar in its effects to that of the Grotto del Cane, as I have often experienced.

The form of the little island of Nisida shews plainly its origin. It is half a hollow cone of a volcano cut perpendicularly; the half crater forms a little harbour called the Porto Pavone; I suppose the other half of the cone to have been detached into the sea by earthquakes, or perhaps by the violence of the waves, as the part that is wanting is the side next to the open sea.

The fertile and pleasant island of Procita shews also most evident signs of its production by explosion, the nature of its soil being directly similar to that of Baïa and Puzzole; this island seems really, as was imagined by the ancients, to have been detached from the neighbouring island of Ischia.

There is no spot, I believe, that could afford a more ample field for curious observations, than the island of Ischia, called Enaria, Inarime, and Pithecusa, by the ancients. I have visited it three times; and this summer passed three weeks there, during which time, I examined, with attention, every part of it. Ischia is eighteen miles in circumference: the whole of its soil is the same as that near Vesuvius, Naples, and Puzzole. There are numberless springs, hot, warm, and cold, dispersed over the whole island, the waters of which are impregnated with minerals of various sorts; so that, if you give credit to the inhabitants of the country, there is no disorder but what finds its remedy here. In the hot months (the season for making use of these baths), those who have occasion for them flock hither from Naples. A charitable institution sends and maintains three hundred poor patients at the baths of Gurgitelli every season. By what I could learn of these poor patients, those baths have really done wonders, in cases attended with obstinate tumours, and in contractions of the tendons and muscles. The patient begins by bathing, and then is buried in the hot sand near the sea. In many parts of the island, the sand is burning hot, even under water. The sand on some parts of the shore is almost entirely composed of particles of iron ore; at least they are attracted by the loadstone, as I have experienced. Near that part of the island called Lacco, there is a rock of an ancient lava, forming a small cavern, which is shut up with a door; this cavern is made use of to cool liquors and fruit, which it does in a short time as effectually as ice. Before the door was opened, I felt the cold to my legs very sensibly; but when it was opened, the cold rushed out so as to give me pain, and within the grotto it was intolerable. I was not sensible of wind attending
5 this

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-13 17:29:27