«11
by letter, in the night between the 5th
and 6th of September, the day before
otir arrival, iiames had proceeded fromi
i t ; but now the mountain was more
quiet than we wiilied. We hoivever
palfed our time very agreeably, from
one o’clock in the night till two next
day, in vifiting the mountain. We
were even fo happy, that the clouds
which covered the greateft part o f it
difpeifed towards evening, and procured
us the moil extenfive profpe6l
imaginable. The mountain is fome-
thing above five thoufand feet high,
-and feparates at the top into three
points, of ivhich that in the middle is
the higheil. The moil inconfiderable
part of the mountain conllils o f lava,
the reil is allies, with hard, folid ilones
thrown from the craters, together
with fome pumice-ilones, o f which
we found only a fmall piece, with a
little native fulphur. A defcription
o f the various kinds o f ilones to be
found here would be too prolix, and
partly unintelligible ; and I fo much
the more willingly omit it, as I hope
to fatisfy your curioiity, as foon as
the
the colleaion I made of them arrives
in Sweden.
Amongil many other craters or
openings, four were peculiarly remarkable
; the firil, the lava o f which had
taken the form of flacks of chimneys,
half broken down ; another, from
which water had flreamed ; a third, all
the ilones o f which were red as b r ick ;
and laftly, one from which the lava had
burfl forth in a flream, and was divided
at fome diftance into three
arms. I have faid before, that we
were not fo happy to fee Heckla vomit
fire ; but there were fufficient traces
o f its burning inwardly ; for on the
upper half of it, covered over with
four or five inches deep o f fnow, we
frequently obferved fpots without any
fnow ; and on the higheil point,
where Fahrenheit’s thermometer was
at 24° in the air, it rofe to 153° when
it was fet down on the ground ; and
in fome little holes it was fo hot, that
we could no longer obferve the heat
with a fmall pocket thermometer. It
is not known whether, fmce the year
1693, Heckla has been burning till
A 4 1766,
i 1!1