8a Sir William Hamilton’s Account of 
seen balls of fire issue, and some of a considerable mag- 
nitude, which bursting in the air, produced nearly the same 
effect as that from the air-balloons in fireworks, the electric 
fire that came out having the appearance of the serpents with 
which those firework balloons are often filled. The day on 
which Naples was in the greatest danger from the volcanic 
clouds, two small balls of fire, joined together by a small link 
like a chain-shot, fell close to my casino, at Posilipo ; they 
separated, and one fell in the vineyard above the house, and 
the other in the sea, so close to it that I heard a splash in the 
water ; but, as I was writing, I lost the sight of this pheno- 
menon, which was seen by some of the company with me, and 
related to me as above. The Abb6 Tata, in his printed ac- 
count of this eruption, mentions an enormous ball of this kind 
which flew out of the crater of Vesuvius whilst he was stand- 
ing on the edge of it, and which burst in the air at some dis- 
tance from the mountain, soon after which he heard a noise 
like the fall of a number of stones, or of a heavy shower qf 
hail. 
During the eruption of the 15th at night, few of the inha- 
bitants of Naples, from the dread of earthquakes, ventured to 
go to their beds. The common people were either employed 
in devout processions in the streets, or were sleeping on the 
quays and open places ; the nobility and gentry, having caused 
their horses to be taken from their carriages, slept in them 
in the squares and open places, or on the high roads just out 
of the town. For several days, whilst the volcanic storms of 
thunder and lightning lasted, the inhabitants at the foot of the 
volcano, both on the sea side and the Somma side, were often 
sensible of a tremor in the earth, as well as of the concussions 
