hundred yards, and in a day or two ceased
flowing entirely, to be succeeded by a similar
rivulet in another part of the crater. Small as
were these streams, being rarely above three
feet diameter, their constant incursions began
to produce a visible augmentation in the rocky
mass, which approached gradually to the trodden
pathway, and at length pushing before it the
boulders, which had been used as bourne-stones,
compelled the chair-bearers to move closer to
the foot of the Palo precipice. The phenomena,
too, were more threatening and more fantastic.
One night it was a brilliant river of fire in a
trench, a furlong in length, some ten feet wide,
perfectly straight, and with banks as well
"pionied and twilled"—if that be the right
reading—as could have been done by the most
accomplished navvy. The stream ran fiercely
enough where visible, but vanished mysteriously
under a precipice, even as it had emerged.
Some days later, I found it—dry, I was going to
say, but I mean no longer flowing, and what
had been liquid was now a well-laid street of
blue pavement, of which I more than once
gladly availed myself to relieve "uneasy steps
over the burning marl." Another time we came
suddenly upon an oval gap, surrounded by
perpendicular rocks, at the bottom of which the
lava rolled in steady solemn billows. The glare
and the sound of the fiery lake were singularly
awful. In a few days this likewise vanished,
leaving a gaping irregular hole too precipitous
and sulphur-stained for safe access. By this
time the field of lava had swelled in dimensions
till the whole crater was brimmed with rock.
The butterflies, I noticed, had disappeared, and
the ants who, on anti-vegetarian principles, had
established their colonies in the utterly arid dust
of the mountain, had all departed. The mountain
was evidently "miching mallicho," but the
old breathing-place above went on with its
accustomed regularity, and there were no signs of
a great outbreak. Even when the lava stream at
length poured over the edge towards Torre del
Annunziata, the process was so gradual that we
could watch with safety the ground behind us
covered by the hot stream, conscious that, by a
very small exertion, we could outstrip the
descending mass, and, passing safely in front of it,
regain our former position. The fact is, that
lava, though irresistible, is a very slow-moving
foe. Certain poetic descriptions of heroes
chased hard by the fast-flowing fire are sadly
at variance with truth. Nor is it easy to
imagine human life in danger from a
lava-stream, unless in the improbable case of a very
sound sleeper finding his house surrounded
during the night. Boiling water and mephitic
gases are the more rapid and deadly weapons of
the volcanic arsenal, and these are happily rare.

All matters being now duly disposed in order
for attack, it was not wonderful that the
general and his staff should appear on the field,
and on the same afternoon our small party, as
we returned round the edge of the crater, in
the direction of Pompeii, met with a startling
apparition. A brisk wind from the sea carried
before it the vapours from the central mouth
towards the jagged and saw-like edges of Somma,
when, looking in that direction, we suddenly
observed a human figure of gigantic size. The
giant strode along the crumbling and
perpendicular cliffs, and was followed by two others, one
a youthful monster not above forty feet high.

Whether the Titans escaped from Zeus's
prison chambers beneath our feet were taking an
evening walk, or whether the Brocken spectre,
accompanied by his family, had indulged himself
with a trip to Naples, we could not decide, but
the spectres kept side by side with us as we
walked on, and soon began their old game of
mimicry just as I remembered to have read of
the Hartz giant in that darling of my childhood,
the Hundred Wonders. The practical, optical,
and altogether irreverential spirit of the age
now seized on us, and urged us to make fun of
the poor monsters by jumping and gesticulating,
thereby compelling the ghosts to leap forty feet
high, and wrestle with the sulphurous smoke on
which their shapes were visible. This phenomenon
may tend to explain in some degree a
puzzling circumstance in the recorded history of
Old Booty, which was the origin of the "pull
devil pull baker" slide of the old galante-show
lantern. It may be remembered that the captain
of a schooner declared that he had seen the
broad-brimmed ship chandler, under whose regimen he
and his crew had pined, "go to the devil," and,
being brought before a magistrate by the relatives
of the deceased Quaker, supported himself by the
testimony of his crew, who one and all deposed to
having actually seen the Quaker's image pursued
round the crater of Stromboli by certain horned
and tailed gentry of ominous aspect. Admitting
the graminivoral appendages and the identity of
the sufferer to be the work of imagination, it is
still difficult to account for the optical delusion,
unless by supposing that a somewhat similar
combination to that described above had enabled the
crew to witness the spectres of some men then
actually on the mountain. The exclamation of the
skipper, "Why, that's old Booty!"—expletives
omitted—acting on imaginations sharpened by
tough junk and weevilly biscuit, will explain their
conviction that they had witnessed the condign
punishment of the purveyor of these dainties.

An equally striking and less amusing apparition
was witnessed at a later period. When
dressing, in the calm spring mornings before the
sea-breeze had set in, my attention had been
often drawn to a curious appearance at the
mouth of the volcano. Instead of the ordinary
cloudy pennant which by floating landwards
indicated fine weather, or by clinging to and
rolling down the sea-face of the volcano gave
token of rain, a thin rod of smoke would at times
project perpendicularly upwards, surmounted by
a small disk apparently spinning round. Was,
then, Typhoeus proposing to set up as a street
juggler? The Terraqueous Titans of Tartarus
would look well in the bill. If so, his skill or
his extensive chin gave him superhuman
advantages, for I have seen three and even four plates
at once spinning on their respective sticks.