The noise and smell of sulphur increasing, we removed from our villa to Naples; and I thought proper, as I passed by Portici, to inform the Court of what I had seen; and humbly offered it as my opinion, that his Sicilian Majesty should leave the neighbourhood of the threatening mountain. However, the Court did not leave Portici till about twelve of the clock, when the lava had reached as far as (4. in Plate I.)--I observed, in my way to Naples, which was in less than two hours after I had left the mountain, that the lava had actually covered three miles of the very road through which we had retreated. It is astonishing that it should have run so fast; as I have since seen, that the river of lava, in the Atrio di Cavallo, was sixty and seventy feet deep, and in some places near two miles broad. When his Sicilian Majesty quitted Portici, the noise was greatly increased; and the concussion of the air from the explosions was so violent, that, in the King's palace, doors and windows were forced open; and even one door there, which was locked, was nevertheless burst open. At Naples, the same night, many windows and doors flew open; in my house, which is not on the side of the town next Vesuvius, I tried the experiment of unbolting my windows[9], when they flew wide open upon every explosion of the mountain. Besides these explosions, which were very frequent, there was a continued subterraneous and violent rumbling noise, which lasted this night about five hours. I have imagined, that this extraordinary noise might be owing to the lava in the bowels of the mountain having met with a deposition of rain water; and that the conflict between the fire and the water may, in some measure, account for so extraordinary a crackling and hissing noise. Padre Torre, who has wrote so much and so well upon the subject of Mount Vesuvius, is also of my opinion. And indeed it is natural to imagine, that there may be rain-water lodged in many of the caverns of the mountain; as, in the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1631, it is well attested, that several towns, among which Portici and Torre del Greco, were destroyed, by a torrent of boiling water having burst out of the mountain with the lava, by which thousands of lives were lost. About four years ago, Mount Etna in Sicily threw up hot water also, during an eruption. The confusion at Naples this night cannot be described; his Sicilian Majesty's hasty retreat from Portici added to the alarm; all the churches were opened and filled; the streets were thronged with processions of saints: but I shall avoid entering upon a description of the various ceremonies that were performed in this capital, to quell the fury of the turbulent mountain.