Island of Ponza

Pair of views and map of the island of Ponza, printed on a sheet from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Or a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Miscellaneous Litterature - Volume 15, No. 1, printed in Edinburgh in 1810.

The views are taken from those published in the book "Some particulars of the present state of Mount Vesuvius; with the account of a journey into the province of Abruzzo, and a voyage to the Isle of Ponza," by Sir William Hamilton, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol.76 (1786), taken from drawings by Francesco Progenie drawn directly from the felucca of Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803). They depict Hamilton directing the artist and workers with hammers taking rock samples (lower left).

A beautiful description of the island comes to us directly from the text of the Encyclopædia Britannica:

“PONZA, or PONTIA, is a small island of the Tuscan Sea, well known to be the place to which many illustrious Romans were formerly banished. It is situated on the coast of Italy near Terracina, and in the neighbourhood of other small islands or rocks named Palmarole, Zannons, &c. between the island of Ventotienne and Monte Circello. All these islands were visited by Sir William Hamilton in the year 1785; and an account of his journey is given in a letter to Sir J. Banks, which appeared in the Phil Trand. vol. Ixxvi. p. 365. Sir William arrived at Ponza on the 20th August; and, according to his account, it lies about go 30 miles mile from Ventotienne. On the aust he went round it in a boat. Its length is about five miles, but its breadth is nowhere above half a mile, and in some places not more than 500 sect. It is surrounded by a multitude of detached rocks, some of them very high, and molt of of them composed of a compact lava. There are many irregularly formed basaltea, but none in large columns. In some places they have a reddish tinge from iron ochre, are very small, and irregularly laid over one another. Some stand perpendicularly, others obliquely, and some lie horizontally. The rocks themselves in which these masses are found are lava of the fame nature with the basaltes. At first fight they appear like the ruins of ancient Roman brick or tyle buildings. One rock is composed of large spherical basalts, and in other places our author found the lava inclined to take the like Spherical form, though on a much smaller scale, some of the former basalts being near two feet in diameter. All these rocks, in our author's opinion, have been detached by the sea from this island, which is entirely composed of volcanic matter, lavas, and tufas of various quidities and colours, as green, yellow, black, and white. Some of these matters are more compact in their texture than others; and in some parts great tracts seem to have undergone similar operations, which flill fuhlitt at a spot called the Pisciareli, on the outside of the Solfatara, near Puzzole, and where a hot sulphurcous vitriolic acid vapour converts all which it penetrates, whether lavas, tufas, volcanic alhes, or pumice-tones, into a pure clay, mofily white, or with a tint of red, blue, green, or yellow. In one part of this island there is a fort of tufa remarkably good for the purpose of building. It is as hard as Bath-stone, and nearly of the fame colour, with- out any mixture of lava or pumice-stone, which usually abound in the tufas of Naples, Buia, and Puzzoli.

'The island of Palmarole which is about four miles from Ponza, is not much more than a mile in circumference. It is composed of the fame volcanie matter, and probably was once a part of Ponza; and in our author's opinion it looks as if the island of Zannone, which lies about the fame distance from Ponza, was once likewise a part of the fame; for many rocks of lava rife above water in a line betwist the two lait-mentioned islands, and the water there is much more thallow than in the gulf of Terracina.

Zannone is much larger and higher than Palmarole; and that half of it next the continent is composed of a lime-stone similar to that of the Apennines near it; the other half is composed of lavas and tufas, resembling in every other respect the foil of the islands just described. Neither Palmarole nor Zannone are inhabited; but the latter furnishes abundance of brushwood for the use of the inhabitants of Ponza, whose number, including the garrison, amounts to near 1700. The uninhabited island of St Stefano in like manner furnishes wood for the people of Ventotienne. It is probable that all these islands and rocks may in time be levelled by the action of the sea. Ponza, in its present state, is the mere skeleton of a volcanic island; little more than its hard or vitrified parts remaining, and they seem to be slowly and gradually mouldering away. The governor of the cattle of Ponza, who had resided there 53 years, told our author that the island was still subject to earthquakes; that there had been violent shock there about four years before; but that the most violent one he ever felt was on the very day and at the hour that Lisbon was destroyed. Two houses out of three which were then on the island were thrown down. "This (fays our author) seems to prove that the volcanic matter which gave birth to these islands is not exhausted".

Fig. 1. Plate CCCCXII. is a plan of the island of Ponza as it is given in the Philosophical Transactions. is Fig. 2. a view of the inside of the harbour of the island. A in the fame figure is a rock of lava. In many parts it is formed into regular basaltes of a reddith colour, tinged in all probability with some ochre. Muit of the detached rocks of the island resemble this. BB represents a tract of volcanic country, converted by a hot sulphureous vitriolic acid vapour into a pure clay, the ground colour of which is muttly white. Fig. 3. is a view from the outside of the harbour, near the light-houfe. C is a rock of volcanic matter converted to pure clay; D is a rock of the fame kind, with itrata of pumice-stone: E is a rock of lava, inclining to take baraltic forms; and F is a rock composed of ipherical basaltes”.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica (original name, in Latin, Encyclopædia Britannica) is one of the major encyclopedias in the English language; its first edition is dated 1768-71 in Edinburgh, Scotland, as Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Compiled upon a New Plan.

A product of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Britannica was originally published in Edinburgh in the second half of the 18th century. The first Britannica came from the minds of Colin Macfarquhar, a bookseller and printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver, who published the work under the pseudonym Society of Gentlemen. They conceived Britannica as a conservative reaction to Denis Diderot's French Encyclopédie (published 1751-1766).

Etching, printed on contemporary laid paper, in very good condition.

For the interesting descriptive text of the Encyclopædia Britannica we refer to the link on Google Books

https://www.google.it/books/edition/Encyclopaedia_Britannica/fWpBAAAAcAAJ?hl=it&gbpv=1&dq=Island+of+Ponza+Plate+CCCCXII&pg=PA372&printsec=frontcover