streams
slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls of which
played the flickering glow of the burning lava. The column of smoke and
flame was still hurled upwards, and the tree, after standing about ten
minutes--a new and awful revelation of the active forces of
Nature--gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved by a
light wind (the first that disturbed the dead calm of the day), bent over
to the eastward. We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last
arched over the strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the
distant Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way,
the sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle
of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn
between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and showers
of white ashes fell, from time to time. We were distant about twelve
miles, in a straight line, from the crater; but the air was so clear,
even under the shadow of the smoke, that I could distinctly trace the
downward movement of the rivers of lava.

This was the eruption, at last, to which all the phenomena of the morning
had been only preparatory. For the first time in ten years the depths of
Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at Malta, and
the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here, to his very base,
to witness a scene, the impression of which I shall never lose, to my
dying day. Although the eruption may continue and the mountain pour forth
fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot but think that the first
upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned forces, will not be equalled
in grandeur by any later spectacle.

After passing Taormina, our road led us under the hills of the coast, and
although I occasionally caught glimpses of Etna, and saw the reflection of
fires from the lava which was filling up his savage ravines, the smoke at
last encircled his waist, and he was then shut out of sight by the
intervening mountains. We lost a bolt in a deep valley opening on the sea,
and during our stoppage I could still hear the groans of the Mountain,
though farther off and less painful to the ear. As evening came on, the
beautiful hills of Calabria, with white towns and villages on their sides,
gleamed in the purple light of the setting sun. We drove around headland
after headland, till the strait opened, and we looked over the ha