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it, except the upper part of a ſquare brick tower, in which were the bells; and it is a curious circumſtance, that thoſe bells, although they were neither cracked nor melted, were deprived of their tone as much as if they had been cracked. When the lava firſt entered the ſea it threw up the water to a prodigious height and particularly when two points of lava met and incloſed a pool of water, that water was thrown up with great violence, and a loud report: at this time, as well as the day after alſo. a great many boiled fiſh were ſeen floating on the ſurface of the ſea.
The lava over the cathedral, and in other parts of the town, is ſaid to be upwards of forty feet in thickneſs; the general height of the lava during its whole courſe was about twelve feet, and in ſome parts not leſs than a mile in breadth.
When Sir William Hamilton viſited it on the 17th of June, the tops of the houſes were juſt viſible here and there in ſome parts, and the timbers within ſtill burning cauſed a bright flame to iſſue out of the ſurface; in other parts, the ſuplhur and ſalts exhaled in a white ſmoke from the lava, forming a white or yellow cruſt on the ſtoriae round the ſpots where it iſſued with the greateſt force. He often heard little exploſions, and ſaw that there blew up like little mines, fragments of the ſcoriae and aſhes into the air; theſe he ſuppoſes to have been occaſioned either by rarefied air in confined cellars, or, perhaps, by ſmall portions of guopowder taking fire, as few in that country are without a gun and ſome little portion of gunpowder in their houſes. As the church feaſts there are uſually attended with fireworks and crackers, a firework-maker of the town had a very great quantity of fireworks ready made for an approaching feaſt, and ſome gunpowder, all of which had been ſhut up in
