In 1541 Fazzello made an ascent of the mountain, which he briefly describes in the fourth chapter of his bulky volume De Rebus Siculis.[9] This chapter is entitled "De Aetna monte et ejus ignibus;" it contains a short history of the mountain, and some mention of the principal towns which he enumerates in the following order: Catana, Tauromenium, Caltabianco, Linguagrossa, Castroleone, Francavilla, Rocella, Randatio (Randazzo), Bronte, Adrano, Paterno, and Motta. Fazzello speaks of only one crater.
In 1591 Antonio Filoteo, who was born on Etna, published a work in Venice in which he describes the general features of the mountain, and gives a special account of an eruption which he witnessed in 1536.[10] The mountain was then, as now, divided into three Regions. The first and uppermost of these, he asserts, is very arid, rugged, and uneven, and full of broken rocks; the second is covered with forests; and the third is cultivated in the ordinary manner. Of the height he remarks, "Ascensum triginta circiter millia passuum ad plus habet." In regard to the name, Mongibello, he makes a curious error, deriving it from Mulciber, one of the names of Vulcan, who, as we have seen, was feigned by the earlier poets to have had his forge within the mountain.
In 1636 Carrera gave an account of Etna, followed by that of the Jesuit Kircher, in 1638. The great eruption of 1669 was described at length by various eye-witnesses, and furnished the subject of the first detailed description of the eruptive phenomena of the mountain. Public attention was now very generally drawn to the subject in all civilised countries. It was described by the naturalist, Borelli, and in our own Philosophical Transactions. Lord Winchelsea, our ambassador at Constantinople, was returning to England by way of the Straits of Messina at the time of the eruption, and he forwarded to Charles II "A true and exact relation of the late prodigious earthquake and eruption of Mount Ætna, or Monte Gibello."
The first map of the mountain which we have been able to meet with, was published in reference to the eruption of 1669; it is entitled, "Plan du Mont Etna communenent dit Mount Gibel en l'Isle de Scicille et de t'incedie arrive par un treblement de terre le 8me Mars dernier 1669." This plan is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris; it was probably drawn from a simple description, or perhaps altogether from the imagination, as it is utterly unlike the mountain, the sides of which possess an impossible steepness. Another very inaccurate map was published in Nuremberg about 1680, annexed to a map of Sicily, which is entitled, "Regnorum Siciliæ et Sardiniæ, Nova Tabula." Again, in 1714 H. Moll, "geographer in Devereux Street, Strand," published a new map of Italy, in which there is a representation of Etna during the eruption of 1669. This also was probably drawn from the imagination; no one who has ever seen the mountain would recognise it, for it has a small base, and sides which rival the Matterhorn in abruptness. Over against the coast of Sicily, and near the mountain, is written:—"Mount Etna, or Mount Gibello. This mountain sometimes issues out pure flame, and at other times a thick smoak with ashes; streams of fire run down with great quantities of burning stones, and has made many eruptions."
During the eighteenth century Etna was frequently ascended, and as frequently described. We have the accounts of Massa (1703), Count D'Orville (1727), Riedesel (1767), Sir William Hamilton (1769), Brydone (1776), Houel (1786), Dolomieu (1788), Spallanzani (1790), and many minor writers, such as Borch, Brocchi, Swinburne, Denon, and Faujas de Saint Fond. There is great sameness in all of these narratives, and much repetition of the same facts; some of them, however, merit a passing notice.
Sir William Hamilton's Campi Phlegræi relates mainly to Vesuvius and the surrounding neighbourhood; but one of the letters "addressed to the Secretary of the Royal Society on October 17th, 1769," describes an ascent of Etna. Hamilton ascended on June 24th with the Canon Recupero and other companions; the few observations of any value which he made have been alluded to elsewhere under the head of the special subjects to which they refer. The illustrations of the Campi Phlegræi, specially the original water-colours which are contained in one of the British Museum copies, are magnificent, and convey a better idea of volcanic phenomena than any amount of simple reading. From them we can well realise the opening of a long rift extending down the sides of a mountain during its eruption, and the formation of subsidiary craters along the line of fire thus opened. Various volcanic products are also admirably painted. In the picture of Etna, however, which was drawn by Antonio Fabris, the artist has scarcely been more successful than his predecessors, and the slope of the sides of the mountain has been greatly exaggerated.
M. Houel, in his Voyage pittoresque dans les Deux Siciles, 1781-1786, has given a fairly good account of Etna, accompanied by some really excellent engravings.
In 1776 Patrick Brydone, a clever Irishman with a good deal of native shrewdness and humour, published two volumes of a Tour in Sicily and Malta, in which he devoted several chapters to Mount Etna. He made the ascent of the mountain, and collected from the Canon Recupero, and from others, many facts concerning its then present, and its past history. He also made observations as to the height, temperature of the air at various elevations, brightness of the stars, and so on. Sir William Hamilton calls Brydone "a very ingenious and accurate observer," and adds that he was well acquainted with Alpine measurements. M. Elie de Beaumont, writing in 1836, speaks of him as le celebre Brydone; while, on the other hand, the Abbé Spallanzani, displeased at certain remarks which he made concerning Roman Catholicism in Sicily, never fails to deprecate his work, and deplores "his trivial and insipid pleasantries." Albeit Brydone's chapters on Etna furnished a more complete account of the volcano than any which had appeared in English up to that time; his remarks are frequently very sound and just, and we shall have occasion more than once to quote him.
It was reserved, however, for the Abate Francesco Ferrara, Professor of Physical Science in the University of Catania, to furnish the first history of Etna and of its eruptions, which had any just claim to completeness. It is entitled, Descrizione dell' Etna, con la Storia delle Eruzioni e il Catalogo del prodotti. The first edition appeared in 1793, and a second was printed in Palermo in 1818. The author had an enthusiastic love for his subject:—"Nato sopra l'Etna," he writes, "che io conobbi ben presto palmo a palmo la mia passione per lo studio fissò la mia attenzione sul bello, e terribile fenomeno che avea avanti agli occhi." The work commences with a general description of the mountain—its height, the temperature of the different regions, the view from the summit, the mass, the water-springs, the vegetable and animal life, and the internal fires. This extends over sixty-nine octavo pages. The second part of the book—eighty pages—gives a history of the eruptions from the earliest times to the year 1811; the third part—sixty-seven pages—treats of the nature of the volcanic products; and the fourth part—thirty-four pages—discusses certain geological and physical considerations concerning the mountain. At the end there are a few badly drawn and engraved woodcuts, and a map which, although the trend of the coast-line is quite wrong, is otherwise fairly good. The engravings represent the mountain as seen from Catania; the Isole dei Ciclopi, and the neighbouring coast; the Montagna della Motta; and a view from Catania of the eruption of 1787. This work has evidently to a great extent been a labour of love; it is full of personal observations, and also embodies the results of many other observers. It has furnished the foundation of much that has since been written concerning Etna.
The Canon Recupero has been alluded to above; he accompanied Hamilton, Brydone, and others to the summit of the mountain, and he was employed by the Government to report on the flood which, in 1755, descended with extraordinary violence through the Val del Bove. Beyond this, Recupero does not appear to have published anything concerning Etna, although it was well known that he had plenty of materials. He died in 1778, and it was not till the year 1815 that his results were published under the title of Storia Naturale et Generale dell' Etna, del Canonico Giuseppe Recupero.—Opera Postuma. This work consists of two bulky quarto volumes, the first of which is devoted to a general description of the mountain, the second to a history of the eruptions, and an account of the products of eruptions. Some idea may be formed of the extreme prolixity of the author if we mention that two chapters, together containing twelve quarto pages, are devoted to the discussion of the height of Etna, while the first volume is terminated by sixty-three closely printed pages of annotations. A few rough woodcuts accompany the volumes; a view of the mountain which, as usual, is out of all reason as regards abruptness of ascent, and a carta oryctographia di Mongibello in which the trend of the coast-line between Catania and Taormina is altogether inexact, complete the illustrations of this most detailed of histories.