ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 25 



and so Sir William Hamilton, in the eruption we are 

 now concerned with, saw it " bubbling up violently" 

 from one of its fountains on the slope of the volcano, 

 u with a hissing and crackling noise, like that of an arti- 

 ficial firework ; and forming, by the continual splashing 

 up of the vitrified matter, a sort of dome or arch over 

 the crevice from which it issued," which was all, inter- 

 nally, " red-hot like a heated oven." 



(35.) However, as time went on, this quiet mode of 

 getting rid of its contents would no longer suffice, and 

 the usual symptoms of more violent action rumbling 

 noises and explosions within the mountain ; puffs of 

 smoke from its crater, and jets of red-hot stones and 

 ashes continued till the end of July, when they in- 

 creased to such a degree as to exhibit at night the most 

 beautiful firework imaginable. The eruption came to 

 its climax from the 5th to the roth of August, on the 

 former of which days, after the ejection of an enormous 

 volume of white clouds, piled like bales of the whitest 

 cotton, in a mass exceeding four times the height and 

 size of the mountain itself; the lava began to overflow 

 the rim of the crater, and stream in torrents down the 

 steep slope of the cone. This was continued till the 

 8th, when the great mass of the lava would seem to have 

 been evacuated, and no longer repressing by its weight 

 the free discharge of the imprisoned gases, allowed 

 what remained to be ejected in fountains of fire, carried 

 up to an immense height in the air. The description of 

 one of these I must give in the picturesque and vivid 

 words of Sir William Hamilton himself. " About nine 



