In a somewhat rare tract,[19] Lord Winchelsea, who was returning to England from Constantinople, and who landed at Catania, gives an account of what he saw of the eruption. He appears to have been frightened at the sight, and took good care to keep in a safe place; hence his letter, which is a short one, is mainly founded on hearsay. However, he says, "I could discern the river of fire to descend the mountain, of a terrible fiery or red colour, and stones of a paler red to swim thereon, and to be as big as an ordinary table.... Of 20,000 persons which inhabited Catania, 3000 did only remain; all their goods are carried away, the cannon of brass are removed out of the castle, some great bells taken down, the city gates walled up next the fire, and preparations made by all to abandon the city." The noble earl is less happy in his scientific ideas than in his general statement of the facts of which he was an eye-witness; we can only hope that he joined the recently-formed Royal Society on his return to England, and listened to Robert Hooke's discourse on fire. In describing the lava, Lord Winchelsea says, "The composition of this fire, stones, and cinders, are sulphur, nitre, quicksilver, sal-ammoniac, lead, iron, brass, and all other mettals!" Two other accounts are appended to the above letter; in one of these we are told that as the lava approached Catania, the various religious bodies carried their relics in procession, "followed by great multitudes of people, some of them mortifying themselves with whips, and other signs of penance, with great complaints and cries, expressing their dreadful expectation of the events of those prodigious fiery inundations." In the midst of all this, news was brought that a large band of robbers had taken advantage of the general distress, and were robbing right and left, and murdering the people: whereupon a troop of Spanish horse was sent out to protect the city and country, three pair of gallows were set up, and such as were found robbing were executed without trial by martial law. [19] "A true and exact relation of the late prodigious earthquake and eruption of Mount Ætna or Monte Gibello; as it came in a letter written to his Majesty from Naples by the Rt. Honble. the Earl of Winchelsea late Ambassadour at Constantinople, who in his return from thence visiting Catania in the Island of Sicily, was an eye-witness of that dreadful spectacle." Published by Authority. Printed by T. Newcomb in the Savoy. 1669.