VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION 59 



steam and cinders, unaccompanied by any flow or stream 

 of lava. Then suddenly the whole business shut up for 

 500 years, and after that — also quite suddenly — in 1631, 

 a really big eruption took place, exceeding in volume the 

 catastrophe of Pliny's date. Not only were columns of 

 dust and vapour ejected to a height of many miles, but 

 several streams of white-hot lava overflowed the edge of 

 the crater and reached the seacoast, destroying towns and 

 villages on the way. Some of these lava-streams were 

 five miles broad, and can be studied at the present day. 

 As many as 18,000 persons were killed. 



There were three more eruptions in the seventeenth 

 century, and from that date there set in a period of far 

 more frequent outbursts, which have continued to our own 

 times. In the eighteenth century there were twenty- 

 three distinct eruptions, lasting each from a few hours to 

 two or three days, and of varying degrees of violence — a 

 vast steam-jet forcing up cinders and stones from the 

 crater into the air, usually accompanied by the outflow of 

 lava, from cracks in sides of the crater, in greater or less 

 quantity. In the nineteenth century there were twenty- 

 five distinct eruptions, the most formidable of which were 

 those of 1822, 1834, and 1872. All of the eruptions of 

 Vesuvius in the last 280 years have been carefully 

 described, and most of them recorded in coloured pictures 

 (a favourite industry of the Neapolitans), showing the 

 appearance of the active volcano both by day and night 

 and its change of shape in successive years. Sir William 

 Hamilton, the British Ambassador at the Court of Naples 

 at the end of the eighteenth century (of whose great folio 

 volumes I am the fortunate possessor), largely occupied 

 himself in the study and description of Vesuvius, and 

 published illustrations of the kind mentioned above, show- 

 ing the appearance of the mountain at various epochs. 

 Since his day there has been no lack of descriptions of 



