The mountain
only once emitted an eruption of lava, in the same manner as is recorded of
Mount Epomeo in Ischia, in the year 1302. But although Jorullo, which is
eighty miles from any active volcano, is in the strict sense of the word a
new mountain, it must not be compared with Monte Nuovo, near Puzzuolo, which
first appeared on the 19th of September, 1538, and is rather to be classed
among craters of elevation. I believe that I have furnished a more natural
explanation of the eruption of the Mexican volcano, in comparing its
appearance to the elevation of the Hill of Methone, now Methana, in the
peninsula of Troezene. The description given by Strabo and Pausanias of
this elevation, led one of the Roman poets, most celebrated for his richness
of fancy, to develop views which agree in a remarkable manner with the
theory of modern geognosy. "Near Troezene is a tumulus, steep and devoid of
trees, once a plain, now a mountain. The vapors inclosed in dark caverns in
vain seek a passage by which they may escape. The heavier earth, inflated
by the force of the compressed vapors, expands like a bladder filled with
air, or like a goat-skin. The ground has remained thus inflated, and the
high projecting eminence has been solidified by time into a naked rock.
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