502 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1795. 



roiincled by so many horrors, it was impossible for the inhabitants to remain in 

 the town, and they all fled; the darkness was such, though it was mid-day, that 

 even with the help of torches it was scarcely possible to keep in the high road; 

 in short, what they described was exactly what Pliny the Younger and his mother 

 had experienced at Misenum during the eruption of Vesuvius in the reign of 

 Titus, according to his 2d letter to Tacitus on that subject. I found that the 

 majority of people here were convinced that the torrents of mud and water, that 

 had done them so much mischief, came out of the crater of Vesuvius, and that 

 it was sea-water; but there cannot be any doubt of those floods having been 

 occasioned by the sudden dissolution of watery clouds mixed with ashes, the air 

 perhaps having been too much rarefied to support them; and when such clouds 

 broke, and fell heavily on Vesuvius, the water not being able to penetrate as 

 usual into the pores of the earth, which were then filled up with the fine ashes 

 of a bituminous and oily quality, nor having free access to the channels which 

 usually carried it ofl^, accumulated in pools, and mixing with more ashes, rose 

 to a great height, and at length forced its way through new channels, and came 

 down in torrents over countries where it was least expected, and spread itself 

 over the fertile lands at the foot of the mountain. 



The 22d of July, one of the new craters, which is the nearest to the town of 

 Torre del Greco, threw up both fire and smoke; which circumstance, added to 

 that of the lava's retaining its heat much longer than usual, seems to indicate 

 that there may still be some fermentation under that part of the volcano. The 

 lava in cooling often cracks, and causes a loud explosion, just as the ice does in 

 the Glaciers in Switzerland; such reports are frequently heard now at the Torre 

 del Greco; and some of the inhabitants told me they often see a vapour issue 

 from the body of the lava, and taking fire in air, fall like those meteors vulgarly 

 called falling stars. The darkness occasioned by the fall of the ashes in the 

 Campagna Felice extended itself, and varied, according to the prevailing winds. 

 On the IQth of June it was so dark at Caserta, which is 15 miles from Naples, 

 as to oblige the inhabitants to light candles at mid-day; and one day during the 

 eruption, the darkness spread over Beneventum, which is 30 miles from Vesu- 

 vius. The Archbishop of Taranto, in a letter to Naples, and dated from that 

 city the 18th of June said, " We are involved in a thick cloud of minute vol- 

 canic ashes, and we imagine that there must be a great eruption either of Mount 

 Etna, or of Stromboli." The bishop did not dream of their having proceeded 

 from Vesuvius, which is about 250 miles from Taranto. We have had accounts 

 also of the fall of the ashes during the late eruption at the very extremity of 

 the province of Lecce, which is still farther oft'; and we have been also assured 

 that those clouds were replete with electrical matter : at Martino, near Taranto, 

 a house was struck and much damaged by the lightning from one of these 



