exhalations. A colony was afterwards established by Hiero, king
of Syracuse, about 380 years before the Christian era; but when they had
built a fortress, they were compelled by an eruption to fly, and never
again returned. Strabo tells us that Timaeus recorded a tradition, that,
a little before his time, Epomeus, the principal mountain in the centre
of the island, vomited fire during great earthquakes; that the land
between it and the coast had ejected much fiery matter, which flowed
into the sea, and that the sea receded for the distance of three stadia,
and then returning, overflowed the island. This eruption is supposed by
some to have been that which formed the crater of Monte Corvo on one of
the higher flanks of Epomeo, above Foria, the lava-current of which may
still be traced, by aid of the scoriae on its surface, from the crater to
the sea.

[Illustration: Fig. 40.

VOLCANIC DISTRICT OF NAPLES.

A. Astroni. B. Monte Barbaro. M. Monte Nuovo. S. The Solfatara.]

To one of the subsequent eruptions in the lower parts of the isle, which
caused the expulsion of the first Greek colony, Monte Rotaro has been
attributed, and it bears every mark of recent origin. The cone, which I
examined in 1828, is remarkably perfect, and has a crater on its summit
precisely resembling that of Monte Nuovo near Naples; but the hill is
larger, and resembles some of the more considerable cones of single
eruption near Clermont in Auvergne, and, like some of them, it has given
vent to a lava-stream at its base, instead of its summit. A small ravine
swept out by a torrent exposes the structure of the cone, which is
composed of innumerable inclined and slightly undulating layers of
pumice, scoriae, white lapilli, and enormous angular blocks of trachyte.
These last have evidently been thrown out by violent explosions, like
those which in 1822 launched from Vesuvius a mass of augitic lava, of
many tons' weight, to the distance of three miles, which fell in the
garden of Prince Ottajano. The cone of Rotaro is covered with the
arbutus, and other beautiful evergreens. Such is the strength of the
virgin soil, that the shrubs have become almost arborescent; and the
growth of some of the smaller wild plants has been so vigorous, that
botanists have scarcely been able to recognize the species.

The eruption which dislodged the Syracusan colony is supposed to have
given rise to that mighty current which forms the promontory of Zaro and
Caruso. T