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The two basins conveyed the idea of two closely contiguous vents for the subterranean fires, and the channels might very well be breaches in the sides of the crater through which the molten lava had burst its way.
The Castle Geyser is so named on account of the fancied resemblance which its mound of white and grey deposit presents to the ruins of a feudal keep, the crater itself being placed on a cone or turret, which has a somewhat imposing appearance compared with the other geysers in the neighborhood.
The town of Viterbo is built up at the foot of a steep hill called Monte Cimini, the lower part of which is composed of trachyte; this is surmounted by tuff, which appears to have been ejected from an extinct crater occupying the summit of the mountain, and now converted into a lake called the Lake of Vico.
The aqueous vapours exhaled by the Narices and crevices of the crater, are only those same waters heated by the interior surfaces down which they flow. We had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the Piton, which forms the summit.
What I may call the crater though it was no actual hole, but rather a cavity torn and then filled up by falling fragments was two or three hundred feet in circumference; and in this space I found considerable masses of the same metallic substance, attached generally to pieces of the cement.
At the time of the author's visit the crater was giving indications, by the great quantity of sulphurous gas and vapour rising from its surface, and small jets of molten lava beginning to flow down the outer side, of the grand outburst of internal forces which was presently to follow.
The top is hollowed into a crater closed with a silky padding. Every other part is contained in the general wrapper, formed of thick, compact white satin, difficult to break and impervious to moisture. Brown and even black silk, laid out in abroad ribbons, in spindle-shaped patterns, in fanciful meridian waves, adorns the upper portion of the exterior.
High above this latter stretch of coast rose a series of snow-crowned hills, arranged in terraces the one above another, gradually increasing in height until their peaks culminated in one that towered far beyond all, like a giant amongst pigmies; while, to the right of this mountain, and apparently much nearer, on a spur of the chain projecting into the sea nearly south of the vessel's position, was one solitary peak, which occasionally emitted thin columns of smoke and which, from the fact of its summit being denuded of snow, most likely marked the site of some volcanic crater in active operation.
Under the old condition of terrestrial things, the ascent of this steep acclivity would have been attended with much fatigue, but as the effect of the altered condition of the law of gravity, the travelers performed perpetual prodigies in the way of agility, and in little over an hour reached the edge of the crater, without more sense of exertion than if they had traversed a couple of miles on level ground.
The roots of the grass itself had been torn up, eaten by the last few starving animals within the besieged compound before they had been killed, and the trees were absolutely stripped of their bark as high as the beasts could reach. At one side of the garden a great open crater, fringed with the ruins of buildings, showed where a mine had exploded.
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