1 98 Physical Notices on the Bay of Naples. 



vineyards, and carrying away some few dwelling-houses. We 

 have already noticed the appearance of this lava, which is per- 

 fectly sterile and untractable. In its course it covered several 

 older lavas, and greatly contributed, as do all successive erup- 

 tions, to extend the elevated plain from which the cone rises, 

 The lava of 1794 was likewise ejected at the base of the cone, 

 on the western side, and a considerable distance from the mouth 

 of 1822, at a spot named La Pedamentina. It opened in a nar- 

 row crack, being 2375 feet (French) in length, and only one- 

 tenth of that number in width. It remains to this moment a 

 vast track of sterile matter, as black and undecomposed as if 

 but freshly ejected.* It took various directions, and spread its 

 devastation far and wide, but nowhere so remarkably as at the 

 town of Torre del Greco, through the very streets of which it 

 rolled its dreadful tide ; and though now we see houses rising 

 on the mass which buried the pre-existent ones, the absolute ef- 

 fects of the lava are so perfectly unaltered, that the effect seems 

 recent. The shattered houses and chapels, partly engulfed in the 

 obdurate mass, still raise their melancholy fragments, with their 

 empty and unlatticed windows, to the eye of the spectator ; and 

 when you mark the course of the flood through the rich vine- 

 yards which clothe the side of Vesuvius, there you find but a few 

 inches betwixt luxuriance and desolation. The lapse of above 

 thirty years has done nothing to soften down the horrible con- 

 trast. After observing its passage through the town, we see it 

 enter the sea; and the condition of the lava in this remarkable si- 

 tuation demands a few words. The breadth of the stream here 

 is no less than 1127 French feet, and it enters 362 under the 

 water. Breislak,*f- from whom these measurements are taken, 

 affirms that this event produced no remarkable phenomenon. 

 " We should have expected," says he, "that the sudden cool- 

 ing occasioned by the sea would have produced basaltic co- 

 lumns in this lava ; but it is consolidated without taking any 

 regular form ; and perhaps this effect is to be ascribed to the 

 abundant scoria with which it is united." Now, notwithstand- 



* The Hon. H. G. Bennet, in his Account of the Island of Teneriffe, in- 

 correctly states, that the lava of 1794 at Vesuvius flowed to the sea, a dis- 

 tance of eighteen miles, in six hours, whereas in reality it flowed only 

 12961 French feet, less than three miles, for which it required from six in 

 the evening to four next morning, or ten hours. 



| Campanie, torn. i. p. 203. 



