At this time the eruption was at its extreme height.  The column of fire was from a quarter to a third of a mile high; and the stones were thrown up to the height of a mile and a quarter.  I passed close to a rock about four feet in diameter, which had rolled down some time before:  it was still red-hot, and I stopped to warm my hands at it.  At a short distance from it lay another stone or rock, also red-hot, but six times the size.  I walked on first with Salvador, till we were within a few yards of the lava—­at this moment a prodigious stone, followed by two or three smaller ones, came rolling down upon us with terrific velocity.  The gentlemen and guides all ran; my first impulse was to run too; but Salvador called on me to stop and see what direction the stone would take.  I saw the reason of this advice, and stopped.  In less than a second he seized my arm and hurried me back five or six yards.  I heard the whizzing sound of the stone as it rushed down behind me.  A little further on it met with an impediment, against which it bolted with such force, that it flew up into the air to a great height, and fell in a shower of red-hot fragments.  All this passed in a moment; I have shuddered since when I thought of that moment; but at the time, I saw the danger without the slightest sensation of terror.  I remember the ridiculous figures of the men, as they scrambled over the ridges of scoria; and was struck by Salvador’s exclamation, who shouted to them in a tone which would have become Caesar himself,—­“Che tema!—­Sono Salvador!"[M]

We did not attempt to turn back again:  which I should have done without any hesitation if any one had proposed it.  To have come thus far, and be so near the object I had in view, and then to run away at the first alarm!  It was a little provoking.  The road was extremely dangerous in the descent.  I was obliged to walk part of the way, as the guides advised, and but for Salvador, and the interesting information he gave me from time to time, I think I should have been overpowered.  He amused and fixed my attention, by his intelligent conversation, his assiduity, and solicitude for my comfort, and the naivete and self-complacency with which his information was conveyed.  He told me he had visited Mount AEtna (en amateur) during the last great eruption of that mountain, and acknowledged with laudable candour, that Vesuvius, in its grandest moments, was a mere bonfire in comparison:  the whole cone of Vesuvius, he said, was not larger than some of the masses of rock he had seen whirled from the crater of Mount AEtna, and rolling down its sides.  He frequently made me stop and look back:  and here I should observe that our guides seemed as proud of the performances of the mountain, and as anxious to show it off to the best advantage, as the keeper of a menagerie is of the tricks of his dancing bear, or the proprietor of “Solomon in all his glory” of his raree-show.  Their enthusiastic shouts and