ETNA

(SICILY)

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

The word Etna, according to thesavants, is a Phœnician word meaning themouth of the furnace. The Phœnician language, as you see, was of the order of that one spoken of by Covielle to theBourgeois Gentilhomme, which expressed many things in a few words. Many poets of antiquity pretend that it was the spot where Deucalion and Pyrrha took refuge during the flood. Upon this score, Signor Gemellaro, who was born at Nicolosì, may certainly claim the honour of having descended in a direct line from one of the first stones which they threw behind them. That would leave, as you see, the Montmorencys, the Rohans, and the Noailles, far behind.

Homer speaks of Etna, but he does not designate it a volcano. Pindar calls it one of the pillars of the sky. Thucydides mentions three great explosions, from the epoch of the arrival of the Grecian colonies up to his own lifetime. Finally, there were two eruptions in the time of Denys; then they followed so rapidly that only the most violent ones have been counted.[10]

Since the eruption of 1781, Etna has had some little desire to overthrow Sicily; but, as these caprices have not had serious results,Etna may be is permitted to stand upon what it has accomplished—it is unique in its self-respect—and to maintain its eminence as a volcano.

Of all these eruptions, one of the most terrible was that of 1669. As the eruption of 1669 started from Monte Rosso, and as Monte Rosso is only half a mile to the left of Nicolosì, we took our way, Jadin and I, to visit the crater, after having promised Signor Gemellaro to come to dinner with him.

It must be understood beforehand that Etna regards itself too far above ordinary volcanos to proceed in their fashion: Vesuvius, Stromboli, and even Hekla pour the lava over their craters, just as wine spills over a too-full glass; Etna does not give itself this trouble. Its crater is only a crater for show, which is content to play cup and ball with incandescent rocks large as ordinary houses, which one follows in their aërial ascension as one would follow a bomb issuing from a mortar; but, during this time the force of the eruption is really felt elsewhere. In reality, when Etna is at work, it throws up very simply upon its shoulders, at one place or another, a kind of boil about the size of Montmartre; then this boil breaks, and out of it streams a river of lava which follows the slope, descends, burning, or overturning everything that it finds before it, and ends by extinguishing itself in the sea. This method of procedure is the cause of Etna’s being covered with a number of little craters which are formed like immensehay-mows; each of these secondary volcanos has its date and its own name, and all have occasioned in their time, more or less noise and more or less ravage.

We got astride of our mounts and started on our way upon a night that seemed to us of terrible darkness as we issued from a well-lighted room; but, by degrees, we began to distinguish the landscape, thanks to the light of the myriads of stars that sprinkled the sky. It seemed from the way in which our mules sank beneath us that we were crossing sand. Soon we entered the second region, or the forest region, that is if the few scattered, poor, and crooked trees merit the name of forest. We marched about two hours, confidently following the road our guide took us, or rather our mules, a road which, moreover, to judge by the eternal declivities and ascents, seemed terribly uneven. Already, we realized the wisdom of Signor Gemellaro’s provisions against the cold, and we wrapped ourselves in our hooded great-coats a full hour before we arrived at a kind of roofless hovel where our mules stopped of themselves. We were at theCasa del Boscoordella Neve, that is to say, theForestor theSnow, names which it merits in either summer or winter. Our guide told us this was our halting-place. Upon his invitation, we alighted and entered. We were half-way on the road to theCasa Inglese.

ETNA.

During our halt the sky was enriched by a crescent, which, although slender, gave us a little light. We continued to march a quarter of an hour longer between trees which became scarcer every twenty feet and finally disappearedaltogether. We were about to enter the third region of Etna, and we knew from the steps of the mules when they were passing over lava, crossing ashes, or when they trampled a kind of moss, the only vegetation that creeps up to this point. As for our eyes, they were of very little use, the sheen appearing to us more or less coloured, and that was all, for we could not distinguish a single detail in the midst of this darkness.

However, in proportion as we ascended, the cold became more intense, and, notwithstanding our cloaks, we were freezing. This change of temperature had checked conversation, and each of us, occupied in trying to keep himself warm, advanced in silence. I led the way, and if I could not see the ground on which we advanced, I could distinguish perfectly on our right the gigantic escarpments and the immense peaks, that reared themselves like giants, and whose black silhouettes stood out boldly upon the deep blue of the sky. The further we advanced, the stranger and more fantastic shapes did these apparitions assume; we well understood that Nature had not originally made these mountains as they are and that it was a long contest that had ravaged them. We were upon the battle-field of the Titans; we clambered over Pelion piled upon Ossa.

All this was terrible, sombre, and majestic; I saw and I felt thoroughly the poetry of this nocturnal trip, and meanwhile I was so cold that I had not the courage to exchange a word with Jadin to ask him if all these visions were not the result of the weakness that I experienced, and if I werenot dreaming. From time to time strange and unfamiliar noises, that did not resemble in the slightest degree any noises that one is accustomed to hear, started from the bowels of the earth, and seemed to moan and wail like a living being. These noises had something so unexpectedly lugubrious and solemn about them that they made your blood run cold.... We walked about three-quarters of an hour upon the steep and rough road, then we found ourselves upon a slightly inclined slope where every now and then we crossed large patches of snow and in which I was plunged up to my knees, and these finally became continuous. At length the dark vault of the sky began to pale and a feeble twilight illumined the ground upon which we walked, bringing with it air even more icy than we had heretofore breathed. In this wan and uncertain light we perceived before us something resembling a house; we approached it, Jadin trotting upon his mule, and I coming as fast as possible. The guide pushed open the door and we found ourselves in theCasa Inglese, built at the foot of the cone, for the great relief of travellers.

It was half-past three o’clock in the morning; our guide reminded us that we had still three-quarters of an hour’s climb at least, and, if we wished to reach the top of the cone before sunrise, we had not a moment to lose.

We left theCasa Inglese. We began to distinguish objects: all around us extended a vast field of snow, in the centre of which, making an angle of about forty-five degrees, the cone of Etna rose. Above us all was in darkness; towards the east only a light tint of opal coloured thesky on which the mountains of Calabria were vigorously outlined.

At a hundred feet from theCasa Inglesewe encountered the first waves of the lava plateau whose black hue did not accord with the snow, in the midst of which it rose like a sombre island. We had to mount these solid waves, jumping from one to another, as I had done at Chamouni and the Mer de Glace, with this difference, that the sharp edges tore the leather of our shoes and cut our feet. This passage, which lasted a quarter of an hour, was one of the most trying of the route.

We were now about a third of the way up, and we had only taken about half an hour to ascend four hundred feet; the east brightened more and more; the fear of not arriving at the summit of the cone in time to see the sunrise lent us courage, and we started again with new enthusiasm, without pausing to look at the immense horizon which widened beneath our feet at each step; but the further we advanced, the more the difficulties increased; at each step the slope became more abrupt, the earth more friable, and the air rarer. Soon, on our right, we began to hear subterranean roarings that attracted our attention; our guide walked in front of us and led us to a fissure from which came a great noise and a thick sulphurous smoke blown out by an interior current of air. Approaching the edges of this cleft, we saw at an unfathomable depth a bottom of incandescent and red liquid; and when we stamped our feet, the ground resounded in the distance like a drum. Happily it was perfectly calm, for if the wind had blown this smoke overto our side, we should have been asphyxiated, for it is charged with a terrible fumes of sulphur.

We found ourselves opposite the crater,—an immense well, eight miles in circumference and 900 feet deep; the walls of this excavation were covered with scarified matter of sulphur and alum from top to bottom; in the bottom as far as we could see at the distance from where we stood, there was some matter in eruption, and from the abyss there ascended a tenuous and tortuous smoke, resembling a gigantic serpent standing on his tail. The edges of the crater were cut out irregularly at a greater or less height. We were at one of the highest points.

Our guide permitted us to look at this sight for a moment, holding us back, however, every now and then by our clothing when we approached too near the precipice, for the rock is so friable that it could easily give way beneath our feet, and we should repeat the joke of Empedocles; then he asked us to remove ourselves about twenty feet from the crater to avoid all accidents, and to look around us.

The east, whose opal tints we had noticed when leaving theCasa Inglese, had changed to tender rose, and was now inundated with the flames of the sun whose disc we began to perceive above the mountains of Calabria. Upon the sides of these mountains of a dark and uniform blue, the towns and villages stood out like little white points. The strait of Messina seemed a simple river, while to the right and left we saw the sea like an immense mirror. To the left, this mirror was spotted with several black dots: these blackdots were the islands of the Lipariote archipelago. From time to time one of these islands glimmered like an intermittent light-house; this was Stromboli, throwing out flames. In the west, everything was in darkness. The shadow of Etna cast itself over all Sicily.

For three-quarters of an hour the spectacle did nothing but gain in magnificence. I have seen the sun rise on Rigi and the Faulhorn, those two Titans of Switzerland: nothing is comparable to the view on Etna’s summit; Calabria from Pizzo to Cape dell Armi, the pass from Scylla to Reggio, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Æolian Islands that seem within reach of your hand; to the right, Malta floating on the horizon like a light mist; around us the whole of Sicily, seen from a bird’s-eye view with its shores denticulated with capes, promontories, harbours, creeks and roads; its fifteen cities and three hundred villages; its mountains which seem like hills; its valleys which we know are furrowed with ploughs; its rivers which seem threads of silver, as in autumn they fall from the sky to the grasses of the meadows; and, finally, the immense roaring crater, full of flames and smoke, overhead Heaven and at its feet Hell: such a spectacle, made us forget fatigue, danger, and suffering. I admired it all without reservation, with my eyes and my soul. Never had God seemed so near and, consequently, so great.

We remained there an hour, dominating all the old world of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Theocritus, without the idea of touching a pencil occurring to Jadin or myself, until it seemed to us that this picture had entered deeplyinto our hearts and remained graven there without the aid of ink or sketch. Then we threw a last glance over this horizon of three hundred leagues, a sight seen once in a lifetime, and we began our descent.

Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage(Paris, 1836.)

FOOTNOTE:[10]The principal eruptions of Etna took place in the year 662,B. C., and inA. D.225, 420, 812, 1169, 1285, 1329, 1333, 1408, 1444, 1446, 1447, 1536, 1603, 1607, 1610, 1614, 1619, 1634, 1669, 1682, 1688, 1689, 1702, 1766, and 1781.

[10]The principal eruptions of Etna took place in the year 662,B. C., and inA. D.225, 420, 812, 1169, 1285, 1329, 1333, 1408, 1444, 1446, 1447, 1536, 1603, 1607, 1610, 1614, 1619, 1634, 1669, 1682, 1688, 1689, 1702, 1766, and 1781.

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