7 6 Sir Willjam Hamilton's Account oj 
beneath its crater, as it was remarked by him, and others at 
the same time, that both the sun and the moon had often an 
unusual reddish cast. 
The water of the great fountain at Torre del Greco began 
to decrease some days before the eruption, so that the wheels 
of a corn-mill, worked by that water, moved very slowly ; it 
was necessary in all the other wells of the town and its neigh- 
bourhood to lengthen the ropes daily, in order to reach at the 
water ; and some of the wells became quite dry. Although 
most of the inhabitants were sensible of this phsenomenon, not 
one of them seems to have suspected the true cause of it. It 
has been well attested, that eight days before the eruption, a 
man and two boys, being in a vineyard above Torre del Greco 
(and precisely on the spot where one of the new mouths 
opened, from whence the principal current of lava that de- 
stroyed the town issued), were much alarmed by a sudden puff 
of smoke that came out of the earth close to them, and was 
attended with a slight explosion. 
Had this circumstance, with that of the subterraneous noises 
heard at Resina for two days before the eruption (with the ad- 
ditional one of the decrease of water in the wells, as above- 
mentioned) been communicated at the time, it would have 
required no great foresight to have been certain that an erup- 
tion of the volcano was near at hand, and that its force was 
directed particularly towards that part of the mountain. 
On the 12th of June, in the morning, there was a violent 
fall of rain, and soon after the inhabitants of Resina, situated 
directly over the ancient town of Herculaneum, were sensible 
of a rumbling subterraneous noise, which was not heard at 
Naples. 
