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lish feet 1 204 . Its height above the sea is twelve feet, and as many feet under water; so that its whole 
height is twenty-four feet; it extends into the sea 626 feet. The sea water was boiling as in a caul¬ 
dron, where it washed the foot of this new formed promontory: and, although our author was at least 
a hundred yards from it, observing that the sea smoked near his boat, he put his hand into the water, 
which was literally scalded; and by this time his boatmen observed that the pitch from the bottom of 
the boat was melting fast, and floating on the surface 01 the sea, and that the boat began to leak, he 
therefore retired hastily from this spot, and landed at some distance from the hot lava. 1 he town of 
Torre del Greco contained about eighteen thousand inhabitants, all of whom (except about fifteen, 
who, from either age or infirmity, could not be moved, and were overwhelmed by the lava in their 
houses), escaped either to Castel-a-mare, which was the ancient Stabiae, or to Naples; but the rapid 
progress of the lava was such, after it had altered its course from Resina, which town it first threat¬ 
ened, and had joined a fresh lava that issued from one of the new mouths, in a vineyard, about a mile 
from the town, that it ran like a torrent over the town of Torre del Greco, allowing the unfortunate 
inhabitants scarcely time to save their lives; their goods and effects were totally abandoned, and indeed 
several of the inhabitants, whose houses had been surrounded with lava, while they remained in them, 
escaped from them, and saved their lives the following day, by coming out of the tops of their houses, 
and walking over the scoriae on the surface of the red hot lava. Five or six old nuns were taken out 
of a convent in this manner on the 16th of June, and carried over the hot lava; their stupidity was 
such as not to have been the least alarmed, or sensible of their danger: one of upwards of ninety years 
of age was found actually warming herself at a point of red hot lava, which touched the window of 
her cell, and which she said was very comfortable; and, though now apprized of their danger, they 
were still very unwilling to leave the convent, in which they had been shut up almost from their in¬ 
fancy, their ideas being as limited as the space they inhabited. Having been desired to pack up what¬ 
ever they had that was most valuable, they all loaded themselves with biscuits and sweetmeats, and 
it was but by accident it was discovered that they had left a sum of money behind them, which was 
recovered for them. 
The lava 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 were the bells; and it is a curious circum¬ 
stance, that those bells, although they were neither cracked nor melted, were deprived of their tone as 
much as if they had been cracked. 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 
water was thrown up with great violence, and a loud report: at this time, as well as the day after also, 
a great many boiled fish were seen floating on the surface of the sea. 
The lava ovei the cathedral, and in other parts of the town, is said to be upwards of forty feet in 
thickness; the general height of the lava during its whole course was about twelve feet, and in some 
parts not less than a mile in breadth. 
When Sir W illiam Hamilton visited it on the 17th of June, the tops of the houses were just visible 
here and there in some parts, and the timbers within still burning caused a bright flame to issue out of 
the surface; in other parts, the sulphur and salts exhaled in a white smoke from the lava, forming a 
white or yellow crust on the scorim round the spots where it issued with the greatest force. He often 
heard little explosions, and saw that they blew up, like little mines, fragments of the scoriae and ashes 
into the air; these he supposes to have been occasioned either by rarefied air in confined cellars, or, 
perhaps, by small portions of gunpowder taking fire, as few in that country are without a gun and 
some little portion of gunpowder in their houses. As the church feasts there are usually attended with 
fireworks and crackeis, a firework-maker of the town had a very great quantity of fireworks ready 
made for an approaching feast, and some gunpowder, all of which had been shut up in his house by the 
lava, a part of which had even entered one of the rooms; yet he actually saved all his fireworks and 
gunpowder some days after, by carrying them safely over the scoriae of the lava that was red hot 
underneath. The heat in the streets of the town, at this time, was so great as to raise the thermo¬ 
meter to very near one hundred degrees, and close to the hot lava it rose much higher. Sir William 
remarked in his way home, that there was a much greater quantity of the petroleum floating on the 
surface of the sea, and diffusing a very strong and offensive smell, than was usual; for at all times in calms, 
patches of this bituminous oil are to be seen floating on the surface of the sea between Portici and Naples, 
T ^ e m i nu te ashes continued falling at Naples; and 
the m ntain, totally obscured by them, continued to alarm the inhabitants with repeated loud explosions. 
