Smoke and stream were coming out of it. I went close. The
fumes of sulphur choked me. I reached out and picked some lumps of pure
sulphur from the edge of the rock. For one moment the smoke ceased. I
held my breath and looked down the hole. I saw the glare of red-hot lava
flowing beneath. The mountain was a pot, full of boiling rock."
Another man writes of a visit in 1868, a quieter year.
"At first we climbed gentle slopes through vineyards and fields and
villages. Sometimes we came suddenly upon a black line in a green
meadow. A few years before it had flowed down red-hot. Further up we
reached large stretches of rock. Here wild vines and lupines were
growing in patches where the lava had decayed into soil. Then came
bare slopes with dark hollow and sharp ridges. We walked on old stiff
lava-streams. Sometimes we had to plod through piles of coarse, porous
cinders. Sometimes we climbed over tangled, lumpy beds of twisted, shiny
rock. Sometimes we looked into dark arched tunnels. Red streams had
once flowed out of them. A few times we passed near fresh cracks in the
mountain. Here steam puffed out.
"At last we reached a broad, hot piece of ground.
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