Sometimes, too, the lava will spit out liquid fire among the branches of the trees, which hangs down afterwards from them in tassels of slag, and yet, by the very same means, the steam in the branches will prevent the liquid fire burning them off, or doing anything but just scorch the bark.
But I can tell you a more curious story still.

The lava stream, you must know, is continually sending out little jets of gas and steam: some of it it may have brought up from the very inside of the earth; most of it, I suspect, comes from the damp herbage and damp soil over which it runs.

Be that as it may, a lava stream out of Mount Etna, in Sicily, came once down straight upon the town of Catania.

Everybody thought that the town would be swallowed up; and the poor people there (who knew no better) began to pray to St.Agatha--a famous saint, who, they say, was martyred there ages ago--and who, they fancy, has power in heaven to save them from the lava stream.

And really what happened was enough to make ignorant people, such as they were, think that St.Agatha had saved them.
The lava stream came straight down upon the town wall.