Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and other volcanos: in a series of letters, addressed to the Royal Society / from the Honourable Sir W. Hamilton ... To which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished.
- William Hamilton
- Date:
- 1772
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and other volcanos: in a series of letters, addressed to the Royal Society / from the Honourable Sir W. Hamilton ... To which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![heap of red hot coals, forming a wall in fome places ten or twelve feet high, which rolling from the top foon formed another wall, and fo on, advancing flowly, not more than about thirty feet in an hour [d]. {¢] Iam convinced, that it might be very. practica- ble to divert the courfe of a lava when in this ftate, by preparing a new bed for it, as is practifed with rivers, I was mentioning this idea at Catania in Sicily, when I was affured, that it had. been done with fuccefs dur- ing the great eruption of Etna, in 1669; that the lava was directing its courfe towards the walls of Catania, and advancing flowly like the abovementicned, when they prepared a channel for it round the walls of the town, and turned it into the fea; that a fucceffion of men, covéred with fheep-fkins wetted, were employed to cut through the tough flanks of the lava, till they made a paflage for that in the centre (which was in perfect fufion) to difgorge itfelf into the channel pre- pared for it. A book I have fince met with gives the fame account of this curious operation, it-is intituled, Relatione del nuovo inceadio fatto da Mongibello 1669, Meffina, Giufeppe Bifagni, 1670. His Sicilian Majetty’s palace at Portici, and the valuable collection of antiqui- ties that have been recovered from beneath the deftruc- tive lava’s of Vefuvius, are in imminent danger of being overwhelmed again by the next that fhall take its courfe The](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32996676_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
