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The stony summit of Antisana, covered with eternal snow, forms an islet in the midst of an immense plain, the surface of which is twelve leagues square, while its height exceeds that of the peak of Teneriffe by two hundred toises. At Vesuvius, at three hundred and seventy toises high, the cone detaches itself from the plain of Atrio dei Cavalli.
It is remembered also owing to the catastrophe whereby some twenty persons out of a large crowd of strangers, who had imprudently ascended to the Atrio del Cavallo to get a closer view of the phenomenon, were suddenly caught by the lava stream and enfolded in its burning clutches.
Between this remnant of the old wall of the crater and the scene of wreckage on the southern face of the Mountain, there now appeared the great cleft, the horse-shoe shaped valley called the Atrio del Cavallo, which separates the two peaks of the whole summit. A fragment only of the original crater, known as the Pedimentina, still remains on the seaward side above Torre del Greco.
As in Vesuvius, the present crater is in the center of the extinct one. The intervals between them are considerably larger and more uneven than the Atrio del Cavallo of the Italian volcano. To our left we had continually in view the magnificent Bulusan volcano, with a hamlet of the same name nestling at the foot of its eastern slope in a grove of coco-trees, close to the sea.
The boar's head, as I understand, Is the rarest dish in all this land, Which thus bedeck'd with a gay garland Let us servire cantico. Caput apri defero, etc. Our steward hath provided this In honor of the King of Bliss, Which on this day to be served is In Reginensi Atrio. Caput apri defero, etc., etc., etc.
The pressure must have been very great which opened two new craters in the Atrio del Cavallo and forced out such a mass of matter. There is no evidence that water had been concerned in the late eruption of Vesuvius; but during the whole of the preceding autumn, the fall of rain had been unusually great and continuous.
Inter alia huius Abbatis opera, hoc memoria praecipue dignum indico quod fenestram magnam in orientali parte alae australis in ecclesia sua imaginibus optime in vitro depictis impleverit: id quod et ipsius effigies et insignia ibidem posita demonstrant. Domum quoque Abbatialem fere totam restauravit: puteo in atrio ipsius effosso et lapidibus marmoreis pulchre caelatis exornato.
One stream of lava flowed towards Torre del Greco, but luckily stopped before it reached the cultivated fields; others, and the most dangerous ones, since some of them came from the new craters, poured down the Atrio del Cavallo, and dividing before reaching the Observatory flowed to the right and to the left the stream which flowed to the north very soon reached the plain, and before night came on had partially destroyed the small town of Massa di Somma.
At last, one evening, in November, 1868, when one of my daughters and I were observing the mountain through a very good telescope, lent us by a friend, we distinctly saw a new crater burst out at the foot of the cone in the Atrio del Cavallo, and bursts of red-hot lapilli and red smoke pouring forth in volumes.
Torrents and inundations change the surface of the globe, and when a great number of currents of lava meet and spread over a plain, as I have seen at Vesuvius, in the Atrio dei Cavalli, they seem to be confounded together, and wear the appearance of real strata. The villa de Orotava has a pleasant aspect at a distance, from the great abundance of water which runs through the principal streets.
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