the late Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. gg 
dell" Arco, and I passed several others between that and the 
town of Ottaiano ; the one near Trochia, and two near the 
town of Somma, were the most considerable, and not less than 
a quarter of a mile in breadth ; and as several eye witnesses 
assured me on the spot, were, when they poured down from 
the mountain of Somma, from 20 to 30 feet high ; it was a 
liquid glutinous mud, composed of scoriae, ashes, stones (some 
of which of an enormous size) mixed with trees that had been 
torn up by the roots. Such torrents, as you may well ima- 
gine, were irresistible, and carried all before them ; houses, 
walls, trees, and, as they told me, not less than four thousand 
sheep and other cattle, had been swept off by the several tor- 
rents on that side of the mountain. At Somma they likewise 
told me that a team of eight oxen, that were drawing a large 
timber tree, had been carried off from thence, and never were 
more heard of. 
The appearance of these torrents, when I saw them, was 
like that of all other torrents in mountainous countries, except 
that what had been mud was become a perfect cement, on 
which nothing less than a pick-axe could make any impression. 
The vineyards and cultivated lands were here much more 
ruined ; and the limbs of the trees much more torn by the 
weight of the ashes, than those which I have already de- 
scribed on the sea side of the volcano. 
The Abb6 Tata, in his printed account of this eruption, 
has given a good idea of the abundance, the great weight, and 
glutinous quality of these ashes, when he says that having 
taken a branch from a fig-tree still standing near the town of 
Somma, on which were only six leaves, and two little unripe 
figs, and having weighed it with the ashes attached to it, he 
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