March. On the same day
the crater cast up great quantities of sand, ashes, and scoriae, and
formed above itself the great double-coned hill now called Monti Rossi
from the red colour of the ashes of which it is mainly composed. On the
25th very violent earthquakes occurred, and the cone of the great
central crater was shaken down into the crater for the fifth time since
the first century A.D. The original current of lava had divided into
three streams, one of which destroyed S. Pietro, the second
Camporotondo, and the third the lands about Mascalucia, and afterwards
the village of Misterbianco. Fourteen villages were altogether
destroyed, and the lava was on its way to Catania. At Albanelli, two
miles from the city, it undermined a hill covered with cornfields, and
carried it forward a considerable distance; a vineyard was also seen to
be floating on its fiery surface. When the lava reached the walls of
Catania it accumulated without progression until it rose to the top of
the wall, 60 feet in height, and it then fell over in a fiery cascade,
and overwhelmed a part of the city. Another portion of the same stream
threw down 120 feet of the wall, and flowed into the city. On the 23rd
of April the lava reached the sea, which it entered as a stream 600
yards broad and 40 feet deep. The stream had moved at the rate of
thirteen miles in twenty days, but as it cooled it moved less quickly,
and during the last twenty-three days of its course it only moved two
miles. On reaching the sea the water of course began to boil violently,
and clouds of steam arose, carrying with them particles of scoriae.
Towards the end of April the stream on the west side of Catania, which
had appeared to be consolidated, again burst forth, and flowed into the
garden of the Benedictine Monastery of S. Niccola, and then branched
off into the city. Attempts were made to build walls to arrest its
progress. An attempt of another kind was made by a gentleman of Catania,
named Pappalardo, who took fifty men with him, having previously
provided them with skins for protection from the intense heat, and with
crowbars to effect an opening in the lava. They pierced the solid outer
crust of solidified lava, and a rivulet of the molten interior
immediately gushed out, and flowed in the direction of Paterno;
whereupon 500 men of that town, alarmed for its safety, took up arms,
and caused Pappalardo and his men to desist. The lava did not altogether
stop for four mo