Sir William Hamilton himself formed somewhat this sort of conclusion, on receiving the first intimation of this shower of stones from the Earl of Bristol.[F]
I cannot therefore but allow my own conclusion to carry conviction with it to my own mind; and to send it forth into the world; as a 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.