504 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



From that time to this, nothing remarkable happened. It 

 seems as if the eruption returned periodically, like the ague 

 or gout. I believe henceforward it will not have such force, 

 though the eruption of the Sunday was accompanied with 

 showers of ashes and water which fell at Naples, and were 

 seen to extend as far as the mountain of Somma, called Ve- 

 suvius, by the ancients, and, as I have often remarked, 

 the clouds of smoke proceeding from the eruption, moved 

 in a direct line towards that mountain, as if these places 

 had a correspondence and connection one with the other. 1 

 In the night, many beams and columns of fire were seen to 

 proceed from this eruption, and some like flashes of light- 

 ning. We have then many circumstances for our observa- 

 tion, the earthquakes, the eruption, the drying up of the sea, 

 the quantity of dead fishes and birds, the birth of springs, 

 the shower of ashes with water and without water, the in- 

 numerable trees in that whole country, as far as the Grotto 

 of Lucullus, torn from their roots, thrown down and cover- 

 ed with ashes, it gave one pain to see them, and all these 

 effects were produced by the same cause that produce^ 

 earthquakes. 



In page 82, he says, on a visit to Mount ./Etna : We saw 

 the evident marks of a dreadful torrent of hot water that 

 came out of the great crater at the time of an eruption of 

 lava in the year 1755. Luckily this torrent did not take its 

 course over the inhabited parts of the mountain; as a like 

 accident on Mount Vesuvius, in 1631 swept away some 

 towns and villages in its neighborhood, with thousands of 

 their inhabitants. The common received opinion is, that 

 these eruptions of water proceed from the volcanoes having 

 a communication with the sea; but I rather believe them to 

 proceed merely from depositions of rain water in some of 

 the inward cavities of them. 



The reader, I think, will have but little doubt that these 

 torrents of fresh water were produced in the same manner 



1 Canied by the upper current of the air towards the east. 



