“The eruptions of this mountain have been numerous in almost every age of the Christian era, and on many occasions prodigiously destructive. The eruptions of volcanoes are usually attended by some shocks like those of earthquakes, although commonly less violent. Open volcanoes continually throw out, in more or less abundance, smoke, ashes, and pumice-stones, or light cinders, but their most formidable effects are produced by a torrent of ignited lava, which, like a vast deluge of liquid, or semi-liquid fire, lays waste the country over which it runs, and buries all the work of human art. In March, 1767, Vesuvius began to throw out a considerable quantity of ashes and stones, which raised its summit in the course of the year no less than two hundred feet, forming first a little mountain of pumice-stones within the crater, which, by degrees, became visible above the margin. The smoke, which was continually emitted, was rendered luminous at night, by the light derived from the fire burning below it. In August, some lava had broken through this mountain, and in September, it had filled the space left between it and the former crater. On the 13th and 14th of October, there were heavy rains, which, perhaps, supplied the water concerned in the eruption that shortly followed. “On the morning of the 19th, clouds of smoke were forced, in continual succession, out of the mouth of the volcano, forming a mass like a large pine-tree, which was lengthened into an arch, and extended to the island of Caprea, twenty-eight miles off; it was accompanied by much lightning, and by an appearance of meteors like shooting stars. A mouth then opened below the crater, and discharged a stream of lava, which Sir William Hamilton ventured to approach within a short distance, imagining that the violence of the confined materials, must have been exhausted; but on a sudden, the mountain opened with a great noise at a much lower point, about a quarter of a mile from the place where he stood, and threw out a torrent of lava, which advanced straight towards him, while he was involved in a shower of small pumice-stones and ashes, and in a cloud of smoke. The force of the explosions were so great, that doors and windows were thrown open by them at the distance of several miles. The stream of lava was in some places two miles broad, and sixty or seventy feet deep; it extended about six miles from the summit of the mountain, and remained hot for several weeks.