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He touched the burning match to the grouped tips of sulphur and his teeth gleamed white as he contemplated the little spurt of hissing flame. Then he dropped his flattened hand upon the tiny eruption and extinguished it, as his sudden grin died away to a bored smile. "There, it is over," he yawned, "and of course it may not happen. Quien sabe?"
On the 30th of April, about one month after the terrible earthquake by which the city of Caraccas, three hundred and sixty miles distant, was destroyed, and twelve thousand of the inhabitants buried in the ruins, an eruption took place from an old crater on the summit of this mountain in St. Vincent, at which for more than a century had shown no symptom of life.
Between them and the mountain, the ground is considerably depressed, and if the lava should ever take a course towards the lake, it would be cast on the downs and the neighbouring parts of Shark Gulf." "We have not yet seen any smoke at the top of the mountain, to indicate an approaching eruption," said Gideon Spilett.
After 1500 the crater became completely quiet, the whole mountain in time being grown over with luxuriant vegetation, while by the next century the interior of the crater became green with shrubbery, indicating that no injurious gases were escaping. This was sleep, not death. In 1631 the awakening came in an eruption of terrible violence.
The greater number of them had their truncated summits cut off obliquely, and they all sloped towards the S.E., whence the trade-wind blows. Mr. M. Moreau de Jonnes has made a similar observation with respect to the volcanic orifices in the West Indian Islands. These occur in great numbers strewed on the ground, and some of them lie at considerable distances from any points of eruption.
Even if the eruption does not quiet down I must set out, for my business presses." Nigel felt much inclined to ask what his business was, but there was a quiet something in the air of the hermit, when he did not choose to be questioned, which effectually silenced curiosity.
Like a flaming torch the great tower roared to the heavens. The whole hilltop resembled the crater of an active volcano. Timber floors and wooden partitions, long seasoned, proved excellent material for the incendiaries, and even the stones were crumbling away, falling into the gulf of fire, sending up a dazzling eruption of sparks, as section after section tumbled into this earthly Hades.
But the form of the lunar volcanic mountains is essentially different; as already observed, they consist in general of a circular rampart enclosing a depressed floor, sometimes terraced as in the case of Copernicus, from which rise one or more conical mountains, which are in effect the later vents of eruption.
"If I go to Vesuvius, I will try to carry away a bit of the lava, which you wish for. There has lately been a great eruption, as it is called, of that Mountain; which means a great breaking-out of hot ashes and fire, and of melted stones which is called lava.
I need not dwell upon Etna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari Islands to prove that volcanic fires are still in existence; and there can be no doubt that in earlier periods almost the whole of Italy was ravaged by them; oven Rome itself, the eternal city, rests upon the craters of extinct volcanoes; and I imagine that the traditional and fabulous record of the destruction made by the conflagration of Phaeton in the chariot of the sun and his falling into the Po had reference to a great and tremendous igneous volcanic eruption, which extended over Italy and ceased only near the Po at the foot of the Alps.
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