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 AEtna are
very different from those of Vesuvius. The latter decompose in half a
century, and become capable of cultivation; those of AEtna 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 covers the greater
part of the mountain's sides and base!

Our purpose was to see the sun rise from the summit of AEtna; and at nine
in the evening, our mules and guides being ready, we put on our Sicilian
capotes, and sallied forth. We had two guides, a muleteer, and as there
was no moon, a man with a lantern to light the mules in their passage over
the beds of lava. For several miles the way was uninteresting, it being
too dark to see any thing except the horrid lava or sand beneath the feet
of the mules. At times the road was so steep that we were ordered by our
guides to lean forward on the necks of the mules, to keep them and
ourselves from being thrown back. At length we entered the woody region.
Here the path was less rocky; and as we wound up the mountain's side,
beneath the shadows of noble trees, I could not but feel the solemn
quietness of a night on AEtna, and contrast it with what has been and what
will in all probability be again, the intermitting roar of the neighboring
volcano, and the dreadful thunder of the earthquake. At midnight we
arrived at the _Casa delle Neve_, or House of Snow. This is a rude
building of lava, with bare walls, entirely destitute of furniture. We
made a fire on the ground, took some refreshments which we had brought
with us, and in about an hour remounted our mules, and proceeded on our
journey. We soon left the region of woods; and being now at an elevation
of seven thousand feet above the sea, felt somewhat cold, and buttoned our
capotes closer about us. From the ridg