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 ; to which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished.
- Hamilton, William, Sir, 1730-1803.
- Date:
- 1773
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 ; to which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished.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]. The \d] I am convinced, that it might be very pra£tica- blfe to divert the courfe of a lava when in this hate, by preparing a new bed for it, as is praclifed with rivers. I was mentioning this idea at Catania in Sicily, when 1 was allured, that it had been done with fuccefs dur¬ ing the great eruption of Etna, in 1669 ; that the lava was dire&ing its courfe towards the walls of Catania, and advancing flowly like the abovementioned, when they prepared a channel for it round the walls of the town, and turned it into the fea; that a fucceflion of men, covered with Iheep-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 perfeft fufion) to difgorge irfelf into the channel pre¬ pared for it. A book I have flnce met with gives the fame account of this curious operation ; it is intituled, Relatione del nuovo incendio fatto da Mongib ello 1669. MeJJtna, Giufeppe Bifagni, 1670. His Sicilian Majefly’s palace at Portici, and the valuable colleftion of antiqui¬ ties that have been recovered from beneath the deftruc- tive lava’s of Yefuvius, are in imminent danger of being overwhelmed again by the next that lhall take it§ courfe that](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30513996_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
