As we rode along from Aci Reale to Taormina, all the rattling of the diligence over the rough road could not drown the awful noise.  There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air, and the thick pants of smoke from the lower crater continued to increase in strength.  The sun was fierce and hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a dazzling whiteness.  A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the diligence, talking with the postillion.  He had been up to the mountain, and was taking his report to the Governor of the district.  The heat of the day and the continued tremor of the air lulled me into a sort of doze, when I was suddenly aroused by a cry from the soldier and the stopping of the diligence.  At the same time, there was a terrific peal of sound, followed by a jar which must have shaken the whole island.  We looked up to Etna, which was fortunately in full view before us.  An immense mass of snow-white smoke had burst up from the crater and was rising perpendicularly into the air, its rounded volumes rapidly whirling one over the other, yet urged with such impetus that they only rolled outwards after they had ascended to an immense height.  It might have been one minute or five—­for I was so entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I lost the sense of time—­but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent were the effects of the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on the summit of the mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and shaped precisely like the Italian pine tree.

Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree.  Its trunk of columned smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the other, in shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile before it sent out its cloudy boughs.  Then parting into a thousand streams, each of which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke, rolling and waving in the air, it stood in intense relief against the dark blue of the sky.  Its rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly white on one side, while, in the shadowy depths of the branches, there was a constant play of brown, yellow, and crimson tints, revealing the central shaft of fire.  It was like the tree celebrated in the Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother of Harold Hardrada—­that tree, whose roots pierced through the earth, whose trunk was of the color of blood, and whose branches filled the uttermost corners of the heavens.

This outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air, and earth, and sea.  And now, from the base of the tree, three white streams slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls of which played the flickering glow of the burning lava.  The column of smoke and flame was still hurled upwards, and the tree, after standing about ten minutes—­a new and awful revelation of the active forces of Nature—­gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved by