Like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course ...

No otherwise does the Northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress ...

Nor does the tempestuous sea bellow so loud, when the Northern blast dashes it, with its foaming waves between Scylla and Charybdis; nor Stromboli, nor Mount Etna, when their sulphurous flames, having been forcibly confined, rend, and burst open the mountain, fulminating stones and earth through the air together with the flames they vomit.

Nor when the inflamed caverns of Mount Etna [Footnote 13:  Mongibello is a name commonly given in Sicily to Mount Etna (from Djebel, Arab.=mountain).  Fr. FERRARA, Descrizione dell’ Etna con la storia delle eruzioni (Palermo, 1818, p. 88) tells us, on the authority of the Cronaca del Monastero Benedettino di Licordia of an eruption of the Volcano with a great flow of lava on Sept. 21, 1447.  The next records of the mountain are from the years 1533 and 1536.  A. Percy neither does mention any eruptions of Etna during the years to which this note must probably refer Memoire des tremblements de terre de la peninsule italique, Vol.  XXII des Memoires couronnees et Memoires des savants etrangers.  Academie Royal de Belgique).

A literal interpretation of the passage would not, however, indicate an allusion to any great eruption; particularly in the connection with Stromboli, where the periodical outbreaks in very short intervals are very striking to any observer, especially at night time, when passing the island on the way from Naples to Messina.], rejecting the ill-restained element vomit it forth, back to its own region, driving furiously before it every obstacle that comes in the way of its impetuous rage ...

Unable to resist my eager desire and wanting to see the great ... of the various and strange shapes made by formative nature, and having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern, in front of which I stood some time, astonished and unaware of such a thing.  Bending my back into an arch I rested my left hand on my knee and held my right hand over my down-cast and contracted eye brows:  often bending first one way and then the other, to see whether I could discover anything inside, and this being forbidden by the deep darkness within, and after having remained there some time, two contrary emotions arose in me, fear and desire—­fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvellous thing within it ...

Drafts of Letters to Lodovico il Moro (1340-1345).

1340.