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We had nearly reached the summit of the cone, when a thick puff of sulphureous smoke almost drove us back headlong. A loud roar at the same time, louder than a thousand claps of thunder, saluted our ears. "Fly! fly!" cried our guides; "the mountain is going to vomit forth its fiery breath." Not a moment did we delay. Down the side of the cone we sprung none of us looked back.
A broad stream of very dense white smoke still flowed over the lip of the topmost crater and down the eastern side. As its breadth did not vary, and the edges were distinctly defined, it was no doubt the sulphureous vapor rising from a river of molten lava.
From the furrows made by this descending fire we could in the daytime see great smokes arise, which probably were made by the sulphureous matter thrown out of the funnel at the top which, tumbling down to the bottom and there lying in a heap, burned till either consumed or extinguished; and as long as it burned and kept its heat so long the smoke ascended from it; which we perceived to increase or decrease, according to the quantity of matter discharged from the funnel.
That morning it left a sulphureous smell behind it, which was very offensive. At night the minister, one Mr. Cragg, and several of the neighhours, came to the house, on a visit. Mr. Cragg went to prayers with them, kneeling at the children's bedside, where it then became very troublesome and loud.
It was only forty miles to Al Hafa, but, owing to adverse winds, it took us exactly two days to perform this voyage, and our boat was one of the dirtiest of the kind we have ever travelled on. In our little cabin in the stern the smell of bilge-water was almost overpowering, and every silver thing we had about us turned black with the sulphureous vapours.
'Tis strange that, in the dark sulphureous mine, Where wild ambition piles its ripening stores Of slumbering thunder, Love will interpose His tiny torch, and cause the stern explosion To burst, when the deviser's least aware.
In the centre of Hell I saw a dark and horrible-looking abyss, and into this Lucifer was cast, after being first strongly secured with chains; thick clouds of sulphureous black smoke arose from its fearful depths, and enveloped his frightful form in the dismal folds, thus effectually concealing him from every beholder.
There are springs of bituminous matter on several of the islands near these houses; and the stones on the riverbank are much impregnated with this useful substance. There is also another place remarkable for the production of a sulphureous salt which is deposited on the surface of a round-backed hill about half a mile from the beach and on the marshy ground underneath it.
Also having made the Red, and consequently the Blew Tincture very Transparent, and suffer'd it to rest in a small open Vial for a Day or two, we found according to our Conjecture, that not only the Blew but the Red Colour also was Vanish'd; the clear Liquor being of a bright Amber Colour, at the bottom of which subsided a Light, but Copious feculency of almost the same Colour, which seems to be nothing but the Tincted parts of the Rose Leaves drawn out by the Acid Spirits of the Oyl of Vitriol, and Precipitated by the Volatile Salt of the Spirit of Urine, which makes it the more probable, that the Redness drawn by the Oyl of Vitriol, was at least as well an extraction of the Tinging parts of the Roses, as a production of Redness; and lastly, if you be destitute of Spirit of Urine, you may change the Colour of the Tincture of Roses with many other Sulphureous Salts, as a strong Solution of Pot-ashes, Oyl of Tartar, &c. which yet are seldome so free from Feculency, as the Spirituous parts of Urine becomes by repeated Distillation.
Its sides are thin and sloping, it is from sixty to eighty feet deep, and the whole surface is strewn with fragments of obsidian, pumice-stones, and lava. Sulphureous vapour, forming a kind of crown of smoke, is emitted from it, whilst the atmosphere at the bottom is perfectly cool.
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