The most sublime object, however, which the summit of Etna presents, is the immense mass of its own colossal body. Its upper region exhibits rough and craggy cliffs, rising perpendicularly, fearful to the view, and surrounded by an assemblage of fugitive clouds, to increase the wild variety of the scene. Amid the multitude of woods in the middle or temperate region, are numerous mountains, which, in any other situation, would appear of a gigantic size, but which, compared to Etna, are mere mole-hills. Lastly, the eye contemplates with admiration the lower region, the most extensive of the three, adorned with elegant villas and castles, verdant hills and flowery fields, and terminated by the extensive coast, where to the south stands the beautiful city of Catania, to which the waves of the neighboring sea serve as a mirror. Etna has been celebrated as a volcano from the remotest antiquity. Eruptions are recorded by Diodorus Siculus, as having happened five hundred years before the Trojan war, or sixteen hundred and ninety-three years before the Christian era. “Etna roars with dreadful ruins nigh, Now hurls a bursting cloud of cinders high, Involved in smoky whirlwinds to the sky; With loud displosion to the starry frame, Shoots fiery globes, and furious floods of flame: Now from her bellowing caverns burst away Vast piles of melted rocks in open day. Her shattered entrails wide the mountain throws, And deep as hell her flaming center glows.”—WARTON. In 1669, the torrent of burning lava inundated a space fourteen miles in length, and four in breadth, burying beneath it part of Catania, till at length it precipitated itself into the sea. For several months before the lava broke out, the old mouth, or great crater of the summit, was observed to send forth much smoke and flame, and the top had fallen in, so that the mountain was much lowered.