The principal cone of Mount Etna was ascended in 1834 by Messrs. Elie de Beaumont and Leopold von Buch. The former describes what they saw in the following terms:--"It was to us a moment of surprise difficult to describe, when we found ourselves unexpectedly on the margin--not, indeed, of the great crater--but of an almost circular gulf, nearly three hundred feet in diameter, which does not touch the great crater save at a small part of its circumference. We peered eagerly into this nearly cylindrical funnel; but vain was our search into the secret of its volcanic action. From the almost horizontal tops of the nearly vertical steeps, nothing can be descried but the upper cone. On trying to reckon those one below another, vision becomes gradually lost in the perfect darkness beneath. No sound issues from this darkness. There are only exhaled slightly sulphurous white vapours, chiefly steam. The dismal aspect of this black and silent gulf, in which our view was lost--its dark moist sides, along which crept, in a languid and monotonous manner, long flakes of vapour of a sombre gray--the great crater to which this narrow gulf is attached, with its confused heap of diverse substances, coloured yellow, gray, red, like the image of chaos--all presented around us an aspect quite funereal and sepulchral." The French geologist, in having escaped from his visit to the crater with nothing worse than a fit of the vapours, came off better than Empedocles, the Sicilian philosopher, in the days of old: for, as the story goes, this inquisitive sage, being very anxious to have a peep into the crater, and venturing too near, toppled in altogether, and nothing more was seen of him, except one of his sandals, which was vomited up by the volcano--thus conveying to his friends an intimation of the manner of his death. Some incredulous persons allege that this story has no better foundation than the fable of the poets, that the giant Enceladus, son of Titan and Terra, having offended Jupiter, the infuriated god first felled him with a thunderbolt, and then put Mount Etna as a sort of extinguisher on the top of him--his restlessness underneath fully accounting for all the commotions of the mountain. Soon after the eruption which took place towards the end of January 1865, the craters then opened were visited by M. Fouqué, a French geologist. At the time of his visit, 10th March, they were seven in number, and he thus describes their modes of action:--