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These repeated throws of cinders, ashes and pumice-stones so much increased the small cone of eruption which had been left in the centre of the flat crateral space that its top became visible at a distance.
Nor were there any igneous stones or red-hot cinders mingled with the smoke that crowned the summit; a circumstance that quite accorded with the absence of the pumice-stones, obsidians, and other minerals of volcanic origin with which the base of a burning mountain is generally strewn. Captain Servadac was of opinion that this peculiarity augured favorably for the continuance of the eruption.
Monte Nuovo is composed of ashes, lapilli, and pumice-stones; and its sudden formation, heralded by earthquakes, and accompanied by the ejection of volcanic matter mixed with fire and water, is recorded by Falconi, who vividly depicts the terror and consternation of the inhabitants of the surrounding country produced by this sudden and terrible outburst of volcanic forces.
This evening Mr Banks observed that in many parts of the inlet there were large quantities of pumice-stones, which lay at a considerable distance above high-water mark, whither they might have been carried either by the freshes or extraordinary high tides, for there could be no doubt but that they came from the sea.
Here are met with decomposed lava, scoria, and pumice-stones in great abundance, whilst below stretches away the boundless sea of clouds.
It was a painful ascent over the sharp lava and the pumice-stones, in an atmosphere often impregnated with a sulphurous smell from the smoking cracks. For a man unaccustomed to walk on land, the Captain climbed the steep slopes with an agility I never saw equalled and which a hunter would have envied. We were two hours getting to the summit of this peak, which was half porphyry and half basalt.
In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic and spirited in detail, was much defective in earnestness, at least in clear earnestness, of purport and outcome; but went tumbling as if in mere welters of explosive unreason; a volcano heaving under vague deluges of scoriae, ashes and imponderous pumice-stones, you could not say in what direction, nor well whether in any.
"I also feared that the violent explosions would detach some of the rocks off the mountain of Somma, under which we were obliged to pass; besides, the pumice-stones, falling upon us like hail, were of such a size as to cause a disagreeable sensation in the part upon which they fell.
Others washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour. Others extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a mortar, and changed their substance. Others sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool. Others gathered barberries and figs off of thistles. Others stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk in a sieve; and much they got by it.
At the same period the inhabitants of the eastern Antilles were alarmed by shocks, which continued during eight months, when the volcano of Guadaloupe threw out pumice-stones, ashes, and gusts of sulphureous vapours. The eruption of the 27th of September, during which very long-continued subterranean noises were heard, was followed on the 14th of December by the great earthquake of Cumana.
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