the late Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. 87 
the convent, in which they had been shut up almost from their 
infancy, their ideas being as limited as the space they in- 
habited. Having desired them 'to pack up whatever they had 
that was most valuable, they all loaded themselves with bis- 
cuits and sweetmeats, and it was but by accident that the friar 
discovered that they had left a sum of money behind them, 
which he recovered for them ; and these nuns are now in a 
convent at Naples. 
At the time I landed at Torre del Greco on the 17th, I 
found some few of its inhabitants returned, and endeavouring 
to recover their effects from such houses as had not been 
thrown down, or were not totally buried under the lava; but 
alas ! what was their cruel disappointment when they found 
that their houses had been already broke open, and com- 
pletely gutted of every thing that was valuable ; and I saw 
a scuffle at the door of one house, between the proprietors, 
and the robbers who had taken possession of it. The lava 
had passed over the centre and best part of the town ; no part 
of the cathedral remained above it, except the upper part of a 
square brick tower, in which are the bells ; and it is a curious 
circumstance that those bells, although they are neither cracked 
or melted, are deprived of their tone as much as if they had 
been cracked, I suppose by the action of the acid and vitriolic 
vapours of the lava. Some of the inhabitants of Torre del 
Greco told me, that when the lava first entered the sea, it 
threw up the water to a prodigious height ; and particularly 
when two points of lava met and inclosed a pool of water, 
that then that water was thrown up with great violence, and 
a loud report : they likewise told me, that at this time, as well 
as the day after, a great many boiled fish were seen floating 
