NOME VII. VOLCANIC INTRITE. 



489 



flashes of lightning by which they were accom- 

 panied, at intervals for an instant, allowed a view 

 of the mountain, through the darkness in which 

 it was involved by the rain of powders. This Darkness, 

 darkness was so prodigiously great, that at Caserta 

 and other places, ten or twelve miles from Vesu- 

 vius, it was impossible to walk the streets at 

 mid-day without torches, and that circumstance 

 was renewed which is related by Pliny on the 

 occasion of the eruption in the time of Titus, 

 "faces mult&y variaque lumina, solvebant obscuri- 

 latem" It is utterly impossible to determine 

 with precision the quantity of ashes or powders 

 that fell in the course of these days, as it was 

 different in different places, according to the di- 

 rection of the wind; it is however computed, on 

 the base of observations at different places, that 

 fourteen inches and six lines in depth fell on an 

 area, the radius of which is three miles, the sum- 

 mit of Vesuvius being the centre. 



" It would be erroneous to conclude that all 

 this mass of matter proceeded from the entrails 

 of the mountain ; the greater part was the off- 

 spring of the ruins of the crater, which during 

 these last days fell into the abyss below. A rain 

 of ashes, when continued for any length of time, 

 is very injurious to vegetation. Lands which, 

 a few days before, presented the most smiling 



Ruin of the 

 crater. 



