new sovereign of Derna, who is said to be very much attached to this country, visit with great personal safety, the ancient site of Berenice, Cyrene, and the gardens of the Hesperides. Some account of the recent eruption of Mount Ætna has probably already reached you; until you receive a detailed description of it, even such a superficial account as I have received from different quarters may perhaps prove acceptable to you. It was from the letter of an English gentleman who was on the spot, that I obtained the following account. The time of the first eruption is not mentioned, but on the 27th of March, Messina was covered with ashes and cinders early in the morning. The children said it rained black snow. No earthquake seems to have been felt. A new crater, approaching in size to that of the Monti Rossi, had been formed; and in the neighbourhood of it, seven or eight small ones; they lie in the direction of Lingua-grossa, about three or four miles from that place, and at an equal distance from Castiglione. On the other side of the mountain, over Nicolosi and over Randazzo, two other craters have opened; the old crater at the summit was also smoking, so that the whole mountain seems to have been in combustion. The principal stream of lava took the slope towards Franca Villa and Castiglione; its breadth varied, according to the shape of the country, from twenty yards to one mile. On the steepest part where the lava was most liquid, it flowed between three and four miles an hour; at other places, and particularly where it approached the vineyards of Franca Villa, its rate was only about fifty yards during the same space of time. As it ran down a very woody country, the breaking down of the forest and its ingulphing in the fiery waves are described as a most sublime spectacle. On the 12th of April the eruption had nearly subsided, but the inhabitants, for whose relief the English had raised a subscription, were in dread of new eruptions. _Extract of a letter dated Malta, 22nd May,_ 1809. I am proceeding from hence to Aleppo as an Indian Mohammedan merchant, the supposed bearer of dispatches from the East India Company to Mr. Barker, British Consul, and the Company’s well known Agent at Aleppo. As such I am recommended to the British Consul at Cyprus, a Greek; and as such I shall find means to excuse my present irregularity of speech and manners. I shall escape the exaction of the custom-house officers, be protected on the road, even by the country authorities, and shall soon be lost in the crowds of Aleppo.