thick pants of smoke from the
lower crater continued to increase in strength. The sun was fierce and
hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a dazzling
whiteness. A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the diligence,
talking with the postillion. He had been up to the mountain, and was
taking his report to the Governor of the district. The heat of the day and
the continued tremor of the air lulled me into a sort of doze, when I was
suddenly aroused by a cry from the soldier and the stopping of the
diligence. At the same time, there was a terrific peal of sound, followed
by a jar which must have shaken the whole island. We looked up to Etna,
which was fortunately in full view before us. An immense mass of
snow-white smoke had burst up from the crater and was rising
perpendicularly into the air, its rounded volumes rapidly whirling one
over the other, yet urged with such impetus that they only rolled outwards
after they had ascended to an immense height. It might have been one
minute or five--for I was so entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I
lost the sense of time--but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent
were the effects of the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on
the summit of the mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and
shaped precisely like the Italian pine tree.

Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree. Its trunk of columned
smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the other, in
shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile before it sent
out its cloudy boughs. Then parting into a thousand streams, each of
which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke, rolling and waving in
the air, it stood in intense relief against the dark blue of the sky. Its
rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly white on one side, while, in the
shadowy depths of the branches, there was a constant play of brown,
yellow, and crimson tints, revealing the central shaft of fire. It was
like the tree celebrated in the Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother
of Harold Hardrada--that tree, whose roots pierced through the earth,
whose trunk was of the color of blood, and whose branches filled the
uttermost corners of the heavens.

This outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were
now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air, and
earth, and sea. And now, from the base of the tree, three white