nter or injure the buildings, which were
previously enveloped or covered over with tuff. But burning torrents
have often taken their course through the streets of Torre del Greco,
and consumed or inclosed a large portion of the town in solid rock. It
seems probable that the destruction of three thousand of its inhabitants
in 1631, which some accounts attribute to boiling water, was principally
due to one of those alluvial floods which we before mentioned: but, in
1737, the lava itself flowed through the eastern side of the town, and
afterwards reached the sea; and, in 1794, another current, rolling over
the western side, filled the streets and houses, and killed more than
four hundred persons. The main street is now quarried through this lava,
which supplied building stones for new houses erected where others had
been annihilated. The church was half buried in a rocky mass, but the
upper portion served as the foundation of a new edifice.

The number of the population at present is estimated at fifteen
thousand; and a satisfactory answer may readily be returned to those who
inquire how the inhabitants can be so "inattentive to the voice of time
and the warnings of nature,"[558] as to rebuild their dwellings on a
spot so often devastated. No neighboring site unoccupied by a town, or
which would not be equally insecure, combines the same advantages of
proximity to the capital, to the sea, and to the rich lands on the
flanks of Vesuvius. If the present population were exiled, they would
immediately be replaced by another, for the same reason that the Maremma
of Tuscany and the Campagna di Roma will never be depopulated, although
the malaria fever commits more havoc in a few years than the Vesuvian
lavas in as many centuries. The district around Naples supplies one
amongst innumerable examples, that those regions where the surface is
most frequently renewed, and where the renovation is accompanied, at
different intervals of time, by partial destruction of animal and
vegetable life, may nevertheless be amongst the most habitable and
delightful on our globe.

I have already made a similar remark when speaking of tracts where
aqueous causes are now most active; and the observation applies as well
to parts of the surface which are the abode of aquatic animals, as to
those which support terrestrial species. The sloping sides of Vesuvius
give nourishment to a vigorous and healthy population of about eighty
thousand souls; and the