500 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1795. 



loosened, and were deranged by the earthquakes, particularly by that of the 

 18th, which attended the falling in of the crater of the volcano, and which had 

 been so violent as to throw many people down, and obliged all the inhabitants 

 of Resina to quit their houses hastily, and to which they did not dare return for 

 2 days. The leaves of all the vines were burnt by the ashes that had fallen on 

 them, and many of the vines themselves were buried under the ashes, and great 

 branches of the trees that supported them had been torn off by their weight. 

 In short, nothing but ruin and desolation was to be seen. The ashes at the foot 

 of the mountain were about 10 or 12 inches thick on the surface of the earth, 

 but in proportion as we ascended, their thickness increased to several feet, not 

 less than 9 or 10 in some parts; so that the surface of the old rugged 

 lavas, that before was almost impracticable, was now become a perfect plain, 

 over which we walked with the greatest ease. The ashes were of a ligiit grey 

 colour, and exceedingly fine, so that by the footsteps being marked on them as 

 on snow, we learnt that three small parties had been up before us. We saw 

 likewise the track of a fox, that appeared to have been quite bewildered, to judge 

 from the many turns he had made. Even the traces of lizards and other little 

 animals, and of insects, were visible on these fine ashes. We ascended to the 

 spot whence the lava of the 15th first issued, and we followed the course of it, 

 which was still very hot, though covered with such a thick coat of ashes, quite 

 down to the sea at Torre del Greco, which is more than 5 miles. A pair of 

 boots, to which I had for the purpose added a new and thick sole, were burnt 

 through on this expedition. It was not possible to get up to the great crater of 

 Vesuvius, nor had any one yet attempted it. The horrid chasms that exist from 

 the spot where the late eruption first took place, in a straight line for near 2 

 miles towards the sea, cannot be imagined. They formed valleys more than 200 

 feet deep, and from half to a mile wide; and where the fountains of fiery matter 

 existed during the eruption, are little mountains with deep craters. Ten thou- 

 sand men, in as many years, could not surely make such an alteration on 

 the face of Vesuvius, as has been made by nature in the short space of 5 hours. 

 Except the exhalations of sulphureous and vitriolic vapours, which broke out 

 from difl^erent spots of the line above-mentioned, and tinged the surface of the 

 ashes and scorias in those parts with either a deep or pale yellow, with a reddish 

 ochre colour, or a bright white, and in some parts with a deep green and azure 

 blue, so that the whole together had the effect of an iris, all around us had the 

 appearance of a sandy desert. We went on the top of 7 of the most consider- 

 able of the new formed mountains, and looked into their craters, which on some 

 of them appeared to be little short of half a mile in circumference; and though 

 the exterior perpendicular height of any of them did not exceed 200 feet, the 

 depth of their inverted cone within was 3 times as great. It would not have 



