Mount Etna may well be called the Queen of European Volcanoes, so majestic does she look, with her lofty summit glistening in the sunbeams white with snow, yet pouring forth volumes of vapour. This mountain, as you will observe from the annexed woodcut, is altogether more massive in its appearance than Vesuvius. It is about three times higher, rising to nearly eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and it has a circuit of about eighty-seven miles at its base. Etna has been a volcano from time immemorial; but of its more ancient eruptions only vague traditions have survived. The Greek poet Pindar is the earliest writer who makes mention of its activity. He refers to it in his first Pythian Ode, Strophe B, 1. 1. The passage is thus rendered by Carey-- "From whose caverned depths aspire, In purest folds upwreathing, tost Fountains of approachless fire-- by day a flood of smouldering smoke With sullen gleam the torrents pour" [Illustration: Mount Etna.] The ode in which this allusion occurs is said to have been written about B.C. 470; and the eruption to which it refers probably took place shortly before that date. Virgil also describes the mountain very forcibly in the Æneid, lib. iii. 570. Dryden renders the passage thus:-- "The port capacious, and secure from wind, Is to the foot of thund'ring Etna joined. By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high: By turns hot embers from her entrails fly, And flakes of mounting flames, that lick the sky. Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown, And shivered by the force come piece-meal down. Oft liquid lakes of burning sulphur flow, Fed from the fiery springs that boil below." Since the one to which Pindar alludes, there have been recorded about sixty eruptions; but in the present century Etna has been less frequently active than Vesuvius.