Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
We would . . . hereby shew, that the bowels of the Earth
are full of Æsturies, that is places overflown, and raging
with Fire, which we call underground Fire-houses, or
Conservatories; whether after such, or in any manner
disposed. From the Centre, therefore, we have deduc'd
the Fire, through all the Paths (to be supposed) of the
Terrestrial World; even to the very Vulcanian Mountains
themselves, in the Exteriour Surface.¹4
As a courageous example of extreme information-gathering,
Kircher had himself lowered into the heaving red crater of
Vesuvius at night in 1638, during one of its actively threatening
periods. His report is graphic in the extreme:
I saw what is horrible to be expressed, I saw it all over of
a light fire, with an horrible combustion, and stench of
Sulphur and burning Bitumen . . . Methoughts I beheld
the habitation of Hell . . . An unexpressible stink . . . and
made me in like manner, ever and anon, belch, and as it
were vomit back again at it.¹5
These were lively times for the geology of Italy. An early
surviving diplomatic exchange, from the papal emissary Silvester
Darius to King James v of Scotland in 1538, contains a reference
to an eruption near Naples: 'Mount Vesuvius has set fire to the
neighbouring countryside, consuming innumerable people and
almost the town of Puteoli.'¹6 Darius was wrong in saying that
this was Vesuvius; it was in fact the eruption in the Phlegraeian
Fields, west of Naples, that gave birth to Monte Nuovo. When
Etna erupted in 1669, lava flowed as far as Catania seventeen
kilometres away, surrounding and partially demolishing its walls.
In the first recorded attempt to control the course of a lava flow,
citizens of Catania attempted to break open the solidifying side
walls of the lava as it pressed against the city to turn it sideways.
This directed the flow to the nearby village of Paterno, whose
residents fought a pitched battle with the Catanians to stop their
engineering plans.¹7
