At Naples, Lyell was detained longer than he had expected, waiting for a Government steamer. "There was," he says, "no other way of going, for the pirates of Tripoli have taken so many Neapolitan vessels that no one who has not a fancy to see Africa will venture." But he arrived in Sicily before the end of November, and succeeded in reaching the summit of Etna on the first of December. He was only just in time, for the next day bad weather set in, snow fell heavily, and the summit of the mountain became practically inaccessible for the winter. But as it was, he was able to examine carefully another active volcano, the phenomena of which corresponded with those of Vesuvius, though on a grander scale. From Nicolosi, where he was delayed a day or two by the weather, Lyell went along the Catanian plain to Syracuse and southward to the extreme point of the island, Cape Passaro. From this headland he followed the coast westward as far as Girgenti, and then struck across the island in an easterly direction till he came within about a day's journey of Catania, and then he turned off in a north-westerly direction through the island to Palermo. In this zigzag journey, which occupied about five weeks, he succeeded in obtaining a good general knowledge of the geology of the eastern part of the island; he examined many sections and collected many fossils, thus obtaining material for an accurate classification of the little-known deposits of the Sicilian lowland, and in addition he lost no opportunity of studying the relations of the volcanic masses, wherever they occurred, to the sedimentary strata. As his letters show, bad roads, poor fare, and miserable accommodation made the journey anything but one of pleasure; but its results, as he wrote to Murchison, "exceeded his warmest expectations in the way of modern analogies." By December 10th he was once more back in the Bay of Naples. As he returned through Rome he availed himself of the opportunity of examining the travertines of Tivoli, which, as he remarked, presented more analogies with those of Sicily than of Auvergne, and welcomed the news that the bones of an elephant had been found in an alluvial deposit which lay beneath the lava of an extinct Tuscan volcano. His notes also prove that he was beginning to see his way to the classification of the extensive deposits of sand and marl in Italy and Sicily, which were subsequently recognised as belonging to the Pliocene era.