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Updated: May 4, 2025
On our way back we visited Solfatara, the celebrated crater plain, about 1000 feet in length by 800 in breadth, skirted by hills. On striking the ground with a stick a sound is produced, from which we can judge that the whole space beneath us is hollow. This excursion is a very disagreeable one; we are continually marching across a mere crust of earth, which may give way any moment.
The Solfatara itself is a trough surrounded by hilly mounds; its smooth, saucepan-like bottom, covered with whitish pumice-sand, is pitted with craters containing violently boiling and fuming mud the so-called fango, famous for its healing properties.
The roof of the cavern is hung with stalactites, which either are covered with solid sulphur, or consist entirely of that substance. In some crevices, which are protected against the cooling effects of the atmospheric air, it melts together in thick, brown crusts. The solfatara of Danan is situated exactly south of that below, at the end of the ravine of the Kasiboi.
The Solfatara, the Amphitheatre and the Temple of Serapis, these are the recognised “sights” of Pozzuoli, which strangers visit to-day in the space of an hour or two, and then return to Naples comforted with the feeling that they have exhausted the attractions of the place.
I found here a manufactory of brimstone and alum. A little church belonging to the Capuchins, where we are shewn a stone on which St. Januarius was decapitated after the bears had refused to tear him to pieces, stands on a hill near the Solfatara. Towards evening we reached the "Dog's Grotto."
The road was a gloomy one, for we were shut in as in a bowl, and could discern around us nothing but mountains of lava, while before us rose the huge smoky column, threatening each moment to shroud us in darkness as the wind blew it in clouds in our direction. When the ground was struck with a stick, it gave forth a hollow rumbling sound like at Solfatara.
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