The island of Stromboli. Coloured aquatint, 1809, after Luigi Mayer.

"Stromboli is the last of the Lipari islands to the north-east. It is inhabited and produces excellent fruits. It has a few plantations of cotton, and some vineyards, on the produce of which about two hundred persons are maintained. It is a singular circumstance that, on the south-east, about half way up the volcano, a spring of cold fresh water, light, and excellent for drinking, issues out from amid the loose cinders, lava and scoriae. This spring never dries, and is now a valuable resource for the inhabitants, when their cisterns of rainwater are empty. Mr Dolomieu, who discovered this spring, imagnes that it proceeds from the sea water raised in vapour by the subterranean fire, and condensed in the loose soil of the summit; the process of distillation being thus performed by nature on an extensive scale ... The annexed view was taken from the island of Basiluzzo, on the south-west"--Mayer, loc. cit.