Page:Burning mountains.pdf/16

(16) 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 much as if they had been cracked. When the lava firſt entered the ſea it threw up the water to a prdigious height; and particularly when two points lava met and incloſed a pool of water, that wat was thrown up with great violence, and a loud rport: at this time, as well as the day after alſo,  great many boiled fiſh were ſeen floating on the ſurface of the ſea.

The lava over the cathedral, and in other part of the town, is ſaid to be upwards of forty feet 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 timber within ſtill burning cauſed a bright flame to iſſue out of the ſurface; in other parts, the ſulphur and ſalts exhaled in a white ſmoke from the lava, forming a white or yellow cruſt on the ſcoriae round the ſpots where it iſſued with the greateſt force. I often heard little explosions, and ſaw that they 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 gunpowder taking fire, as few in that country are without gun and ſome little portion of gunpowder in the houſes. A 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