368 Mary Somerville. 



better, soon came to fetch me with our friend Mr. 

 James Swinton, and we passed the whole day at 

 windows in an hotel at Santa Lucia, immediately 

 opposite the mountain. Vesuvius was now in the 

 fiercest eruption, such as has not occurred in the 

 memory of this generation, lava overflowing the 

 principal crater and running in all directions. The 

 fiery glow of lava is not very visible by daylight ; 

 smoke and steam is sent off which rises white as 

 snow, or rather as frosted silver, and the mouth of 

 the great crater was white with the lava pouring 

 over it. New craters had burst out the preceding 

 night, at the very time I was admiring the beauty 

 of the eruption, little dreaming that, of many people 

 who had gone up that night to the Atrio del Cavallo 

 to see the lava (as my daughters had done repeatedly 

 and especially during the great eruption of 1868), 

 some forty or fifty had been on the very spot where 

 the new crater burst out, and perished, scorched to 

 death by the fiery vapours which eddied from the 

 fearful chasm. Some were rescued who had been 

 less near to the chasm, but of these none eventually 

 recovered. 



Behind the cone rose an immense column of dense 

 black smoke to more than four times the height of 

 the mountain, and spread out at the summit hori- 

 zontally, like a pine tree, above the silvery stream 



