ground, at
least, for speculation, and reflection, to the minds of others.

That ashes, and sand, and pyritical and sulphureous dust, mixed with
metallic particles from volcanoes; fit for the instantaneous
crystallization, and consolidation of such bodies as we have been
describing, are often actually floating in the atmosphere, at incredible
distances from volcanoes, and more frequently than the world are at all
aware of, is manifest from several well attested facts.

On the 26th of December, 1631, Captain _Badily_, being in the Gulph of
Volo, in the Archipelago, riding at anchor, about ten o'clock at night,
it began to rain _sand_ and _ashes_; and continued to do so till two
o'clock the next morning. The ashes lay about two inches thick on the
deck: so that they cast them overboard just as they had done snow the
day before. There was no wind stirring, when the ashes fell: and yet
this extraordinary shower was not confined merely to the place where
_Badily's_ ship was;[G] but, as it appeared afterwards, was extended so
widely to other parts, that ships coming from _St. John d'Acre_ to that
port, being at the distance of _one hundred leagues_ from thence, were
covered with the same sort of ashes. And no possible account could be
given of them, except that they might come from Vesuvius.

On the 23d of October, 1755, a ship belonging to a merchant of Leith,
bound for Charles Town, in Carolina, being betwixt Shetland and Iceland,
and about twenty-five leagues distant from the former, and therefore
about three hundred miles from the latter, a shower of dust fell in the
night upon the decks.[H]

In October, 1762, at _Detroit_, in America, was a most surprising
darkness, from day-break till four in the afternoon, during which time
some rain falling, brought down, with the drops, sulphur and dirt;
which rendered white paper black, and when burned fizzed like wet
gunpowder:[I] and whence such matter could originally be brought,
appeared to be past all conjecture, unless it came so far off as from
the volcano in Guadaloupe.

Condamine says, the ashes of the volcano of _Sangay_, in South America,
sometimes pass over the provinces of Maca, and Quito; and are even
carried as far as Guayaquil.[J]

And Hooke says,[K] that on occasion of a great explosion from a volcano,
in the island of Ternata, in the East Indies, there followed so great a
darkness, that the inhabitants could not see each other the next day:
and he justly lea