"The sides are sulphur cliffs, stained in every brilliant shade, from
lightest yellow to deepest orange and brown. In the midst of the lava
floor rises a black cone, the chimney of the great furnace. This was
burning and flaming like the furnace of a glass-house, and every few
moments throwing up showers of cinders and melted lava which fell with
a rattling sound on the black floor of the pit. One small bit of the
lava came over and fell at our feet, and a gentleman lighted his cigar
at it.
"All around where we stood the smoke was issuing from every chance
rent and fissure of the rock, and the Neapolitans who crowded round us
were every moment soliciting us to let them cook us an egg in one of
these rifts, and, overcome by persuasion, I did so, and found it very
nicely boiled, or rather steamed, though the shell tasted of Glauber's
salt and sulphur.
"The whole place recalled to my mind so vividly Milton's description
of the infernal regions, that I could not but believe that he had
drawn the imagery from this source. Milton, as we all know, was some
time in Italy, and, although I do not recollect any account of his
visiting Vesuvius, I cannot think how he should have shaped his
language so coincidently to the phenomena if he had not.
"On the way down the mountain our ladies astonished the natives by
making an express stipulation that our donkeys were not to be beaten,--
why, they could not conjecture.
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