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But rave and rave though they might against me, the glare from the Symbol drove them shuddering back as though it had been a lava-stream; and Zaemon was not the man to hand me over to their fury until he had delivered formal sentence as the emissary of our Clan on the Sacred Mount. So the end was not to be yet.
The lava-stream caves of Ætna are not only interesting because of their peculiarities of form, which we shall not undertake to describe, but also for the reason that they help us to account for a very peculiar feature in the history of the great cone.
It flowed to a distance of upwards of twenty miles, killing many cattle and destroying a large tract of pasturage. Twelve miles from the crater, the lava-stream was between forty and fifty feet deep and nearly a mile in width. On the 12th of October a fresh torrent of lava burst forth, and heaped up another similar mass.
Leaving the little bay with its sulphur-impregnated sands, and turning inland, we proceed along a road across an ancient lava-stream over-grown with pine trees, wild caper and a tangle of aromatic brushwood, to Forio, which with its white domed houses, its palm trees, and its stately bare-footed women bearing tall pitchers on their heads gives at first acquaintance the full impression of an Oriental city.
When the lighter superficial lava is brought suddenly into contact with water, as when a lava-stream enters the sea, it becomes still lighter and more porous forming the well-known substance called pumice, so much used for polishing. It may be regarded as the solidified froth of lava, and is so light that it floats on the surface of water.
Before the cone was built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake, cutting it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced into the pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of the lava-stream where it came to rest.
And this lava-stream seemed to have felt some pity for the beautiful meadows, for it frequently separated into two branches, and thus enclosed the verdant plain. But it could not withstand the violence of the succeeding masses; it had been carried on, and had spread death and destruction everywhere.
Nevertheless, this test will not always avail the geologist; for, although there is usually a prevailing character in lava emitted during the same eruption, and even in the successive currents flowing from the same volcano, still, in many cases, the different parts even of one lava-stream, or, as before stated, of one continuous mass of trap, vary much in mineral composition and texture.
Gaul and Germany were like a volcano giving signs of approaching eruption; and at any moment, and hardly with warning, another lava-stream might be pouring down into Venetia and Lombardy. To deal with this danger was the work marked out for Caesar. It is the fashion to say that he sought a military command that he might have an army behind him to overthrow the constitution.
Another remarkable case is mentioned and figured by Judd, where one of the Lipari Isles, composed of pumice and rising out of the Mediterranean, has been breached by a lava-stream of obsidian. Loc. cit., p. 123. Reyer has produced such dome-shaped masses by forcing a quantity of plaster of Paris in a pasty condition up through an orifice in a board; referred to by Judd, loc. cit., p. 125.
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