Thus situated, this volcano lit the lower plain like an
immense torch, even to the extreme limits of the horizon.
I said that the submarine crater threw up lava, but no flames.
Flames require the oxygen of the air to feed upon and cannot be
developed under water; but streams of lava, having in themselves
the principles of their incandescence, can attain a white heat,
fight vigorously against the liquid element, and turn it to
vapour by contact.
Rapid currents bearing all these gases in diffusion and torrents
of lava slid to the bottom of the mountain like an eruption
of Vesuvius on another Terra del Greco.
There indeed under my eyes, ruined, destroyed, lay a town--
its roofs open to the sky, its temples fallen, its arches dislocated,
its columns lying on the ground, from which one would still
recognise the massive character of Tuscan architecture.
Further on, some remains of a gigantic aqueduct; here the high
base of an Acropolis, with the floating outline of a Parthenon;
there traces of a quay, as if an ancient port had formerly
abutted on the borders of the ocean, and disappeared with
its merchant vessels and its war-galleys.
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