DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6094#0294
SICILY AND MALTA. 271
This passage decides what has been much
disputed, that JEtna. was, in these early ages,
of as great an elevation as at present. It
has been alleged, that volcanos always in-
crease in height till they are extinguimed,
when they are supposed to moulder down,
and by degrees sink into the caverns that
are below them, like the astruni, and the
solfaterra at Naples : However we find that
iEtna was at that time as now, covered with
eternal snows, and was supposed, like Atlas,
to be one of the great props of heaven.
But what pleases me the mod in this de-
scription is, that it proves beyond the pos-
sibility of a doubt, that in these very re-
mote eruptions, it was common for the
lavas of iEtna to run a great way out to
sea>—The conclusion, I think, is fully as
just, and perhaps not less sublime, than the
" avolsaque viscera montis erigit erudans "
of Virgil, which, I must own, I think ra-
ther
This passage decides what has been much
disputed, that JEtna. was, in these early ages,
of as great an elevation as at present. It
has been alleged, that volcanos always in-
crease in height till they are extinguimed,
when they are supposed to moulder down,
and by degrees sink into the caverns that
are below them, like the astruni, and the
solfaterra at Naples : However we find that
iEtna was at that time as now, covered with
eternal snows, and was supposed, like Atlas,
to be one of the great props of heaven.
But what pleases me the mod in this de-
scription is, that it proves beyond the pos-
sibility of a doubt, that in these very re-
mote eruptions, it was common for the
lavas of iEtna to run a great way out to
sea>—The conclusion, I think, is fully as
just, and perhaps not less sublime, than the
" avolsaque viscera montis erigit erudans "
of Virgil, which, I must own, I think ra-
ther