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expect defence from the lofty walls of their city. After deſtroying ſeveral convents, churches, and villages, this fiery current directed its courſe to Catania, where it poured impetuouſly over the ramparts, which are near ſixty feet in height, and covered up five of its baſtions, with the intervening curtains. After laying waſte a great part of this beautiful city, and entirely deſtroying ſeveral valuable remains of antiquity, its further progreſs was ſtopped by the ocean, over whoſe banks it poured its deſtructive current. In its courſe from the rent in the mountain, till its arrival in the ſea, it is ſaid to have totally deſtroyed the property of near thirty thouſand perſons.
Eruption of Mount Veſuvius in Italy, 1794.
THE mountain had been remarkably quiet for ſeven months before the late eruption, nor did the uſual ſmoke iſſue from its crater, but at times it emitted ſmall clouds of ſmoke that floated in the air in the ſhape of little trees. It was remarked by the Father Antonio di Petrizzi, a capuchin friar (who printed an account of the late eruption) from his convent cloſe to the unfortunate town of Torre del Greco, that for ſome days preceding this eruption, a thick vapour was ſeen to ſurround the mountain, about a quarter of a mile beneath its crater, and it was obſerved by him and others at the ſame time, that both the ſun and the moon had often an unuſual reddiſh caſt,
The water of the great fountain at Torre del Grcco began to decreaſe ſome days before the eruption, ſo that the wheels of a corn mill, worked by that water, moved very ſlowly; it was neceſſary in all the other wells of the town and its neighbourhood to lengthen the ropes daily, in order to reach
