Viewing page 195 of 285

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

80 ANNUAL REGISTER
this cold; though upon mount Etna and mount Vesuvius, where there are caverns of this kind, the cold is evidently occasioned by a subterraneous wind: the natives call such places ventaroli.  May not the quantity of nitre, with which all these places abound, account in some measure for such extreme cold?  My thermometer was unluckily broken, or I would have informed you of the exact degree of the cold in this ventaroli of Ischia, which is by much the strongest in its effects I ever felt.  The ancient lavas of Ischia shew, that the eruptions there have been very formidable; and history informs us, that its first inhabitants were driven out of the island by the frequency and the violence of them.  There are some of these ancient lavas not less than two hundred feet in depth.  The mountain of St. Nicola, on which there is at present a convent of hermits, was called by the ancients Epomeus; it is as high, if not higher, than Vesuvius, and appears to me to be a section of the cone of the ancient and principal volcano of the island, its composition being all tufa or lava.  The cells of the convent abovementioned are cut out of the mountain itself; and there you fee plainly that its composition no way differs from the matter that covers Herculaneum, and forms the monte Nuovo.  There is no sign of a crater on the top of this mountain, which rises almost to a sharp point; time, and other accidents may be reasonably supposed to have worn away this distinctive mark of its having been formed by explosion, as I have feen to be the cafe in other mountains, formed evidently by explosion, on the flanks of Etna and 

3

Vesuvius.  Strabo, it his 5th book, upon the subject of this island, quotes Timæus, as having said, that, a little before his time, a mountain in the middle of Pithecusa, called Epomeus, was shook by an earthquake, and vomited flames.

There are many other rising grounds in this island, that, from the nature of their composition, must lead one to think the fame as to their origin.  Near the village of Castiglione, there is a mountain formed surely by an explosion of a much later date, having preserved its conical form and crater entire, and producing as yet but a slender vegetation: there is no account, however, of the date of this eruption.  Nearer the town of Ischia, which is on the sea shore, at a place called Le Cremate, there is a crater, from which, in the year 1301 or 1302, a lava ran quite into the sea; there is not the least vegetation on this lava, but it is nearly in the fame state as the modern lavas of Vesuvius.  Pontano, Maranti, and D. Francesco Lombardi, having recorded this eruption; the latter of whom says, that it lasted two months, that many men and beasts were killed by the explosion, and that a number of the inhabitants were obliged to seek for refuge at Naples and in the neighbouring islands.  In short, according to my idea, the island of Ischia must have taken its rife from the bottom of the sea, and been increased to its present size by divers later explosions.  This is not extraordinary, when history tells us (and from my own observation I have reason to believe) that the Lipary islands were formed in the like manner.  There has been no eruption

For the YEAR 1772. 81
eruption in Ischia since that just mentioned, but earthquakes are very frequent there; two years ago, as I was told, they had a very considerable shock of an earthquake in this island.

Father Goree's account of the formation of the new island in the Archipelago (situated between the two islands called Kammeni, and near that of Santorini) of which he was an eye witness, strongly confirms the probability of the conjectures I venture to fend you, relative to the formation of those islands and that part of the continent above described: it seems likewise to confirm the accounts given by Strabo, Pliny, Justin, and other ancient authors, of many islands in the Archipelago, formerly called the Ciclades, having sprung up from the bottom of the sea in the like manner.  According to Pliny, in the 4th year of the cxxxv Olympiad, 237 years before the Christian æra, the island of Thera (now Santorini) and Theresia were formed by explosion; and, now 130 years later, the island Hiera (now called the great Kammeni) rose up.  Strabo describes the birth of this island in these words: " In the middle space
" between Thera and Therasia
" flames burst out of the sea for
" four days, which, by degrees,
" throwing up great masses, as if
" they had been raised by ma-
" chines, they formed an island of
" twelve stadia in circuit."  And
Justin says of the fame island, Eodem anno inter infulas Theramenem et 
Therefiam, medio utriufque ripæ et
maris fpatio, terræ motus fuit: in
quo, cum admiratione navigantium,
repente ex profundo cum calidis aqis
Infula emerfit.

Pliny mentions also the forma-
Vol. XV.

tion of Aspronisi, or the White Island, by explosion, in the time of Vespasian. It is known, likewise, that in the year 1628, one of the islands of the Azores, near the island of St. Michael, rose up from the bottom of the sea, which was in that place 160 fathoms deep; and that this island, which was raised in fifteen days, is three leagues long, a league and a half broad, and rises three hundred and sixty feet above water.

Father Goree, in his account of the formation of the new island of the Archipelago, mentions two distinct matters that entered into the composition of this island, the one black, the other white.  Aspronisi, probably from its very name, is composed of the white matter, which if, upon examination, should prove to be a tufa, as I strongly suspect, I should think myself still more grounded in my conjectures; though I must confess, as it is, I have scarcely a doubt left with respect to the country I have been describing having been thrown up in a long series of ages by various explosions from subterraneous fire.  Surely there are at present many existing volcanos in the known world; and the memory of many others have been handed down to us by history.  May there not therefore have been many others of such ancient dates as to be out of the reach of history?

Such wonderful operations of nature are certainly intended by all-wife providence for some great purpose.  They are not confined to any one part of the globe, for there are volcanos existing in the four quarters of it.  We fee the great fertility of the foil thrown up by explosion, in part of the country I have
G


 

Transcription Notes:
As I've been transcribing this document, I've seen inconsistency in whether others transcribe the s's as s or as f's. I am following what the previous transcriber did on the last page ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-13 15:18:05 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-13 18:31:25 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-13 20:32:13 I looked over some other transcripts and saw f was actually s