2-996-022 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Crater of Mount Etna - from a drawing by S. Read, 1860. 'Etna, celebrated from the most remote antiquity for its magnitude and its volcanic eruptions, is situated in the north-eastern part of Sicily..."The snow had melted from the sides of the cone...we clambered over large beds of lava, which were twisted and thrown up in most extraordinary shapes...We now began the ascent...our feet sinking into hot sulphur and ashes at every step. Respiration became difficult, from two causes: we were now almost 10,000 feet above the sea; and the fumes of sulphur which issued from numerous little holes, and from the holes which our feet made, nearly choked us...a deep underground sound, like very distant thunder, told us unmistakably that Etna was not quite at rest within. Immediately after the shock we noticed a fresh stream of sulphurous vapour issue out from the sulphur within a foot or two of where we were sitting...It was no unimpressive moment of our lives when, standing on the crater's brink...we looked into the deep hollow beneath, mysteriously sending forth its waving columns of smoke...The sides appeared very precipitous, but we were disabled from looking down to any considerable depth by the swiftly-rising clouds of smoke...".' From "Illustrated London News", 1860.