The Knickerbocker | Page 6

the reader imagine a mountain whose
base is as broad as the whole range of the Catskills, as seen from
Catskill village, rising to nearly three times their height; its lower parts
are of gentle ascent, but as it rises it becomes more and more steep,
until it terminates in a broken summit. Imagine it divided, as the eye
ascends, into three regions or belts: the first and lowest is covered with
villages, gardens, vineyards, olive-groves, oranges, and fields of grain
and flax, and the date-bearing palm. The second region, which
commences about four thousand feet above the sea, is called the
Regione Sylvosa, or woody region. Here chestnuts, hexes, and on the
north pines of great size flourish. This belt reaches to the elevation of
about seven thousand feet, where the Regione Scoperta, or bare region,
commences. The lower part of this is intermingled lava, rocks, volcanic
sands, and snow; still higher are vast fields of spotless snow, which
centuries have seen unwasted, with here and there a ridgy crag of black
lava, too steep for the snows to lodge upon; and toward the summit of
the cone, dark patches of scoriæ and ashes, which, heated by the
slumbering fires, defy the icy blasts of these upper realms of air. It will

readily be supposed that, when viewed from a distance, Mount Ætna is
an object to make a deep impression on the mind:
But for yon filmy smoke, that from thy crest Continual issues like a
morning mist The sun disperses, there would be no sign That from thy
mighty breast bursts forth at times The sulphurous storm--the
avalanche of fire; That midnight is made luminous, and day A ghastly
twilight, by thy lurid breath. By thee tormented, Earth is tossed and
riven: The shuddering mountains reel; temples and towers The works
of man, and man himself, his hopes His harvests, all a desolation made!
Sublime art thou, O Mount! whether beneath The moon in silence
sleeping with thy woods, And driving snows, and golden fields of corn;
Or bleat on thy slant breast the gentle flocks, And shepherds in the
mellow glow of eve Pipe merrily; or when thy scathéd sides Are laved
with fire, answered thine earthquake voice By screams and clamor of
affrighted men. Sublime thou art!--a resting-place for thought, Thought
reaching far above thy bounds; from thee To HIM who bade the central
fires construct This wondrous fabric; lifted thy dread brow To meet the
sun while yet the earth is dark, And ocean, with its ever-murmuring
waves.
On the ninth of May, myself and travelling companion commenced the
ascent of Mount Ætna; and as the season was not the most favorable,
the snows extending farther down the sides of the mountain than in
summer, we were equipped, under the direction of our guide, with
coarse woollen stockings to be drawn over the pantaloons, thick-soled
shoes, and woollen caps. Mounting our mules, we left Catania in the
morning. The road was good and of gradual ascent until we reached
Nicolosi, about fourteen miles up the mountain. We saw little that was
particularly interesting on our route except that the hamlets through
which we passed bore fearful evidences of the effects of earthquake.
Arrived at Nicolosi, the place where travellers usually procure guides
and mules for the mountain, it was our intention to rest for the
remainder of the day; but Monte Rosso, an extinguished crater, being in
the vicinity, my curiosity got the better of my intention to rest, and I
sallied forth to examine it. The road lay through the village, which is
built of the lava, and is arid and black, and many of the buildings rent

and twisted. Monte Rosso was formed by the eruption of 1669, which
threw out a torrent of lava that flowed thirteen miles, destroying a great
part of the city of Catania in its resistless course to the sea, where it
formed a rugged promontory which at this day appears as black, bare,
and herbless as on the day when its fiery course was arrested by the
boiling waters. And here I would remark, that the lavas of Ætna are
very different from those of Vesuvius. The latter decompose in half a
century, and become capable of cultivation; those of Ætna remain
unchanged for centuries, as that of Monte Rosso testifies. It has now
been exposed to the action of the weather nearly two hundred years,
with the exception of the interstices where the dust and sand have
collected, it is destitute of vegetation. Broken in cooling into masses of
rough but sharp fracture, its aspect is horrid and forbidding, and it is
exceedingly difficult to walk over. If two centuries have produced so
little change, how many centuries must have served to form the rich
soil which