'In the year 1872 I was a witness of the great eruption of Vesuvius. Standing from the morning alone upon the top of the mountain, that day in which the great outbreak began, I waded ankle-deep in flour of sulphur upon a burning hollow soil of lava: in the midst was a mammel-like [sic] chimney, not long formed, fuming with a light corrosive breath; which to those in the plain had appeared by night as a fiery beacon with trickling lavas. Beyond was a new seat of the weak daily eruption, a pool of molten lava and wherefrom issued all that strong dinning noise and uncouth travail of the mountain; from thence was from time to time tossed aloft, and slung into the air, a swarm of half-molten wreathing missiles. I approached the dreadful ferment, and watched that fiery pool heaving in the sides and welling over, and swimming in the midst as a fount of metal, and marked how there was cooled at the air a film, like that floating web upon hot milk, a soft drossy scum, which endured but for a moment, in the next, with terrific blast as of a steam-gun, by the breaking in wind of the pent vapours rising from the infernal magma beneath, this pan was shot up sheetwise in the air, where, whirling as it rose with rushing sound, the slaggy sheet parted diversely, and I saw it slung out into many great and lesser shreds. The pumy writhen slags fell whissing again in the air, yet soft, from their often half-mile high parabolas, the most were great as bricks, a few were huge crusts as flag-stones. The pool-side spewed down a reeking gutter of lavas.

'At afternoon, the weight of molten metal risen in the belly of the volcano hill (which is vulcanic powder wall and old lava veins, and like the plasterer's puddle in his pan of sand,) had eaten away, and leaking at mid-height through the corroded hill sides, there gushed out a cataract of lava. Upon some unhappy persons who approached there fell a spattered fiery shower of vulcanic powder, which in that fearful moment burned through their clothing, and, scorched to death, they lived hardly an hour after. A young man was circumvented and swallowed up in torments by the pursuing foot of lava, whose current was very soon as large as Thames at London Bridge. The lower lavas rising after from the deep belly of the volcano, and in which is locked a greater expansive violence, way is now blasted to the head of the mountain, and vast outrageous destruction upward is begun.

'Before the morrow, the tunnel and cup of the mountain is become a cauldron of lavas, great as a city, whose shimmering (a fearful earth shuddering hubbub) troubles the soil for half a day's journey all round. The upper liquid mineral matter, blasted into the air, and dispersed minutely with shooting steam, is suddenly cooled to falling powder; the sky of rainy vapour and smoke which hangs so wide over, and enfolds the hideous vulcanic tempest, is overcharged with electricity; the thunders that break forth cannot be heard in that most tremendous dinning. The air is filled many days, for miles round, with heavy rumour, and this fearful bellowing of the mountain. The meteoric powder rains with the wind over a great breadth of country; small cinders fall down about the circuit of the mountain, the glowing upcast of great slags fall after their weight higher upon the flanks and nearer the mouth of the eruption; among them are some quarters of strange rocks, which were rent from the underlying frame of the earth (5000 feet lower), upon Vesuvius, they are limestone. The eruption seen in the night, from the saddle of the mountain, is a mile-great sheaf-like blast of purple-glowing and red flames belching fearfully and up-rolling black smoke from the vulcanic gulf, now half a mile wide. The terrible light of the planetary conflagration is dimmed by the thick veil of vulcanic powder falling; the darkness, the black dust, is such that we cannot see our hands, nor the earth under our feet; we lean upon rocking walls, the mountain incessantly throbs under us: at a mile's distance, in that huge loudness of the elemental strife, one cannot almost hear his own or his neighbour's voice. Days pass and the hidden subterraneous passions slowly expire, the eruption is at an end.'

An extract from the book Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles Montagu Doughty. He was a man doughty in name and deed. Borrow the book from the library. See the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on-line for a potted life. Search the encyclopaedia with the term charles doughty for other paths to follow.