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vapour was seen to surround the mountain, about a quarter of a mile beneath its crater, as it was 
remarked bj 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 of Torre del Greco began to decrease some days before the eruption, 
so that the wheels of a corn-mill, worked by the water, moved very slowly; it was necessary in all 
the other wells of the town and its neighbourhood 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 phenomenon, not one of them seems to have suspected the true cause of it. Eight days also 
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, whence the principal current of lava that destroyed 
the town issued) were much alarmed by a sudden puff of smoke which issued from 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 additional one of the decrease of water in the wells) been communicated at the 
time, it would have required no great foresight to have been certain that an eruption 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 1794 , in the morning, there was a violent fall of rain, and soon after the inha¬ 
bitants of Resina, situate directly over the ancient town of Herculaneum, were sensible of a rumbling 
subterraneous noise, which was not heard at Naples. 
From the month of January to the month of May, the atmosphere was generally calm, and there 
was continual dry weather. In the month of May there was a little rain, but the weather was 
unusually sultry. For some days preceding the eruption, the Duke della lorre, a learned and inge¬ 
nious nobleman, who published two letters upon the subject of the eruption, observed by his electro¬ 
meters, that the atmosphere was charged in excess with the electric fluid, and continued so for several 
days during the eruption. 
About eleven o’clock on the night of the 12th of June, the inhabitants of Naples were all sensible 
of a violent shock of an earthquake; the undulatory motion was evidently from east to west, and 
appeared to have lasted near half a minute. The sky, which had been quite clear, was soon after 
covered with black clouds. The inhabitants of the towns and villages, which are very numerous at 
the foot of Vesuvius, felt this earthquake still more sensibly, and say, that the shock at first was from 
the bottom upwards, after which followed the undulation from east to west. I his earthquake 
extended all over the Campagna Felice; and the royal palace at Caserta, which is fifteen miles from 
Naples, and one of the most magnificent and solid buildings in Europe (the walls being eighteen feet 
thick) was shook in such a manner as to cause great alarm, and all the chamber bells rang. It was 
likewise much felt at Beneventum, about thirty miles from Naples; and at Ariano in Puglia, which is 
at a much greater distance; both these towns, indeed, have been often afflicted with earthquakes. 
On Sunday the 1 5th of June, soon after ten o’clock at night, another shock of an earthquake was 
felt at Naples, but did not appear to be quite so violent as that of the 12th, nor did it last so long; at 
the same moment a fountain of bright fire, attended with a very black smoke and a loud report, was 
seen to issue, and rise to a great height, from about the middle of the cone of Vesuvius; soon after 
another of the same kind broke out at some little distance lower down; then, as is supposed by the 
blowing up of a covered channel full of red hot lava, it had the appearance as if the lava had taken its 
course directly up the steep cone of the volcano. Fresh fountains succeeded one another hastily, and 
all in a direct line tending, for about a mile and a half down, towards the towns of Resina and Torre 
del Greco. Sir William Hamilton could count fifteen of them, and believes there were others obscured 
by the smoke. It seems probable, that all these fountains of fire, from their being in sucn an exact 
line, proceeded from one and the same long fissure down the flanks of the mountain, and that the lava 
and other volcanic matter forced its way out of the widest parts of the crack, and formed there the 
little mountains and craters that will be described in their proper place. It is impossible that any 
description can give an idea of this fiery scene, or of the horrid noises that attended this great operation 
of nature. It was a mixture of the loudest thunder, with incessant reports, like those from a numer¬ 
ous heavy artillery, accompanied by a continual hollow murmur, like that of the roaring of the ocean 
during a violent storm; and, added to these was another blowdng noise, line that of the ascending of 
a large flight of sky-rockets, or that which is produced by the action of the enormous bellows on the 
surface of the Carron iron foundery in Scotland. The frequent falling of the huge stones and scoria;, 
