Behind the cone rose an immense column of dense black smoke to more than four times the height of the mountain, and spread out at the summit horizontally, like a pine tree, above the silvery stream which poured forth in volumes. There were constant bursts of fiery projectiles, shooting to an immense height into the black column of smoke, and tinging it with a lurid red colour. The fearful roaring and thundering never ceased for one moment, and the house shook with the concussion of the air. One stream of lava flowed towards Torre del Greco, but luckily stopped before it reached the cultivated fields; others, and the most dangerous ones, since some of them came from the new craters, poured down the Atrio del Cavallo, and dividing before reaching the Observatory flowed to the right and to the left--the stream which flowed to the north very soon reached the plain, and before night came on had partially destroyed the small town of Massa di Somma. One of the peculiarities of this eruption was the great fluidity of the lava; another was the never-ceasing thundering of the mountain. During that day we observed several violent explosions in the great stream of lava: we thought from the enormous volumes of black smoke emitted on these occasions that new craters had burst out--some below the level of the Observatory; but that can hardly have been the case. My daughters at night drove to Portici, and went up to the top of a house, where the noise seems to have been appalling; but they told me they did not gain anything by going to Portici, nor did they see the eruption better than I did who remained at Santa Lucia, for you get too much below the mountain on going near. On Sunday, 28th, I was surprised at the extreme darkness, and on looking out of window saw men walking with umbrellas; Vesuvius was emitting such an enormous quantity of ashes, or rather fine black sand, that neither land, sea, nor sky was visible; the fall was a little less dense during the day, but at night it was worse than ever. Strangers seemed to be more alarmed at this than at the eruption, and certainly the constant loud roaring of Vesuvius was appalling enough amidst the darkness and gloom of the falling ashes. The railroad was crowded with both natives and foreigners, escaping; on the other hand, crowds came from Rome to see the eruption. We were not at all afraid, for we considered that the danger was past when so great an eruption had acted as a kind of safety-valve to the pent-up vapours. But a silly report got about that an earthquake was to take place, and many persons passed the night in driving or walking about the town, avoiding narrow streets. The mountain was quite veiled for some days by vapour and ashes, but I could see the black smoke and silvery mass above it. While looking at this, a magnificent column, black as jet, darted with inconceivable violence and velocity to an immense height; it gave a grand idea of the power that was still in action in the fiery caverns