Narrative of an Excursion to the Lake Amsanctus and to Mount Vultur in Apulia in 1834 (Cambridge Library Collection – Physical Sciences)

This short but distinctive paper was published in 1835 by Charles Daubeny (1795-1867), who began his career as a physician but soon found his passion to be volcanos. At this time, Daubeny held chairs in chemistry and botany at Oxford. He had made many field trips to European volcanic regions between 1819 and 1825, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822, and in 1826 published the first edition of his famous Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos, of which a later version also appears in this series. Here Daubeny describes a winter trip to the Apulia (Puglia) region in the south-east of Italy, rarely described by travel writers of his time, to visit Lake Amsanctus, famously mentioned by Virgil, and the extinct volcano Mount Vultur. Although Daubeny’s overall focus is scientific, his account also includes lively descriptions of classical remains and rural society in southern Italy.