an volcano, and the magnitude of
its explosions, as well as the range of phenomena which they exhibit,
incomparably greater. It happens, however, that while human history of
the recorded kind has been intimately bound up with the tiny Vesuvian
cone, partly because the relatively slight nature of its disturbances
permitted men to dwell beside it, the larger AEtna has expelled culture
from the field near its vent, and has done the greater part of its
work in the vast solitude which it has created.[9]

[Footnote 9: In part the excellent record of Vesuvius is due to the fact
that since the early Christian centuries the priests of St. Januarius,
the patron of Naples, have been accustomed to carry his relics in
procession whenever an eruption began. The cessation of the outbreak has
been written down to the credit of the saint, and thus we are provided
with a long story of the successive outbreaks.]

AEtna has been in frequent eruption for a very much longer time than
Vesuvius. In the odes of Pindar, in the sixth century before Christ,
we find records of eruptions. It is said also that the philosopher
Empedocles sought fame and death by casting himself into the fiery
crater. There has thus in the case of this mountain been no such long
period of repose as occurred in Vesuvius. Though our records of the
outbreaks are exceedingly imperfect, they serve to show that the vent
has maintained its activity much more continuously than is ordinarily
the case with volcanoes. AEtna is characteristically a lava-yielding
cone; though the amount of dust put forth is large, the ratio of the
fluid rock which flows away from the crater is very much greater than
at Vesuvius. Nearly half the cone, indeed, may be composed of this
material. Our space does not permit anything like a consecutive story
of the AEtnean eruptions since the dawn of history, or even a full
account of its majestic cone; we can only note certain features of a
particularly instructive nature which have been remarked by the many
able men who have studied this structure and the effects of its
outbreak.

The most important feature exhibited by AEtna is the vast size of its
cone. At its apex its height, though variable from the frequent
destruction and rebuilding of the crater walls, may be reckoned as
about eleven thousand feet. The base on which the volcanic material
lies is probably less than a thousand feet above the sea, so that the
maximum thickness of the heap of volca