CHAPTER XXI.

GREAT ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS.

“E’en while they cheered the gladiator’s thrust, And shouted as the lion crunched his bones, Up sprang the Fire King from his ages’ sleep Shook wide his robe of ever-deepening night, And flung his fiery banner on the wind. The groaning earth then trembled at his tread, And thousand thunders rent the raging mount, While prince and pauper, ’mid the scorching gloom, Groped through the gaping streets; the ocean hissed, And palaces and marble temples reeled, And crushed or prisoned; still the ashes fell, Till mansions, statues, homes and colonnades, And Strength, and Beauty, Love, and Life, and Death, Lay heaps on heaps, in one black ruin blent.”

For nearly seventeen hundred years there lay beneath a sea of ashes near the Naples Bay, a city whose destruction had not been described by the younger Pliny; and in the lapse of years its site had been forgotten. During the construction of an aqueduct in 1592, workmen frequently came upon foundations of buildings. No curiosity seems to have been aroused. Nearly a hundred years later other buildings were discovered, with the inscription “POMPEII.” Still there was no practical interest. Then the attention of the learned was drawn to the discoveries at Herculaneum; and Alcubierre, a Spanish colonel of engineers, in examining the subterranean canal, was led by the discovery of a house and statues to conjecture that some great treasures might lie buried there. Obtaining permission of the King of Naples, he began excavations in the year 1748. In a few days he unearthed “a picture eleven palms long by four and one-half high, containing festoons of eggs, fruits and flowers, the head of a man, large and in good style, a helmet, an owl, various small birds and other objects.” Then was found the skeleton of a man, covered with the lava mud. By his side were eighteen brass coins and one of silver. Then was found an amphitheatre, with a seating capacity of ten thousand. But the work was poorly conducted: valuable pictures were detached from the walls, and the buildings again covered with rubbish. No strangers were allowed to copy anything.

When the French occupied Naples, the work was for a time better conducted; then it again declined. When Victor Emmanuel became King of Italy, a distinguished antiquarian scholar, Guiseppe Fiorelli, was appointed director-general of the works. Since then, the work has been well done, Signor Fiorelli noting “every appearance or fragment which might afford or suggest a restoration of any part of a buried edifice; replacing with fresh timbers every charred beam, propping every tottering wall or portion of brick work,” till the tourist sees to-day a town in the integrity of its outlines and order of its arrangement. “Temples, baths, markets, tombs, stand out just as they stood eighteen hundred years ago. The villa of the port, the forum, the counting-house, the baker’s shop, the school-room, the kitchen, carry us into the very heart of Roman life in the brightest days of the empire. The jewelry of beauty, the spade of the laborer, the fetter of the prisoner and the weapon of the soldier are all there, reproducing and realizing the past with a vividness which can scarcely be conceived.”

Relics and historic records give us an ideal of the past. How correct is the ideal may be inferred from the fact that no two antiquarians have the same conception of a Druid temple. With all the details of Scripture and Josephus, we have not an exact model of the temple. Inhabited ruins change with their possessors: those uninhabited decay in the war of elements. But Pompeii was, so to speak, hermetically sealed, in the height of its prosperity, preserved from Goths and Vandals, and is laid before us to-day as it stood over eighteen centuries ago, allowing us to see how sudden was the storm that burst upon it long years ago. The paintings are “undimmed by the leaden touch of time; household furniture left in the confusion of use; articles, even of intrinsic value, abandoned in the hurry of escape, yet safe from the robber, or scattered about from the trembling hand which could not pause or stoop for its most valuable possessions; and in some instances the bones of the inhabitants, bearing sad testimony to the suddenness and completeness of the calamity that overwhelmed them.”

“There are the very ruts which were made by the wheels of chariots, flying, perhaps, from the impending ruin; there are water-pipes, in the cavities of which, sealed by the hand of time, the splashing fluid can still be heard; there are rude and grotesque inscriptions, scratched by some loiterer on the stucco, and as fresh as when they excited the mirth of the passer-by; there are egg-shells, bones of fish and chickens, and other fragments of a repast of which skeletons lying near were partaking when the catastrophe overwhelmed them; there is fuel ready to be supplied to furnaces for heating the baths; there are the stains left upon the counters of drinking shops by wet glasses; there are the vials of the apothecary, still containing the fluids he was wont to dispense; there are ovens in which loaves of bread, carbonized, but otherwise perfect, may yet be seen; there are vases with olives still swimming in oil, the fruit retaining its flavor, and the oil

burning readily when submitted to the flame; there are shelves, on which are piled stores of raisins, figs and chestnuts; there are amphorae containing the rare wine for which Campania was so famous.”

Here you saw a new altar of white marble, wondrously beautiful, just from the hands of the sculptor; “an enclosure was building all round; the mortar just dashed against the side of the wall was but half spread out; you saw the long, sliding stroke of the trowel about to return and obliterate its own track; but it never returned; the hand of the workman was suddenly arrested, and the whole looks so fresh and new that you would almost swear that the mason had only gone to his dinner, and about to come back immediately to smooth the roughness.”

The younger Pliny tells us of his uncle’s death, and of the suddenness of the calamity. The people were in the amphitheater when the volcano burst forth. The elder Pliny, in command of the fleet at Misenum, was called by his sister to notice a strange cloud that had just appeared. He had just returned from a walk, bathed, and gone to his study. This was August 24, A. D. 79, about 1 P.M. The dense cloud occasionally glowed with light; again, it was of inky blackness. It was the “pine tree banner,” since become so familiar to the Neapolitans. Pliny at once started for his galleys, determined to have a closer view of the strange scene. As he went to the shore he received a note from a lady who lived at the base of the mountain, urging him to come to her assistance. He set out at once to render what aid he could; “for the villas stood extremely thick upon that lovely coast.” They neared the mount; cinders, pumice, ashes, and glowing stones fell on and among the vessels. Sternly ordering the frightened crew to press on, Pliny stood in the bow of his vessel, calmly dictating notes and observations on the awful scene. Reaching Stabiae, he found a friend in great fear, preparing for flight, and waiting for a change of wind. Pliny ordered baths, and sat calmly down to supper, assuring his friend that the lurid flames on the mountain sides were but villages fired by the heated stones. Retiring to rest, his anxious friends heard him snoring. Finding they were about to be entombed in the falling cinders, they roused him, and all, tying pillows on their heads as protection from the showers of stones, sought the seashore; but the waves ran too high for them to embark. It was still dark as Erebus in the limit of the cloud, though already broad day. Drinking some water, Pliny stretched himself on a mat; but an unusual rush of sulphurous vapor compelled the company to disperse, and two servants assisted him to rise, but he at once fell back dead. Perhaps the noxious vapors were in greater quantity near the ground. His nephew tells us he always had weak lungs. The company fled. Three days later, Pliny’s body was found “looking more like a man asleep than dead.” At Misenum, fourteen miles away, the earth was constantly and violently shaken. Houses were toppling down. Chariots could not be steadied, even by supporting them with large stones. The sea rushed back, leaving many marine animals stranded high and dry. The dark cloud on Vesuvius flamed and roared. The cloud enveloped Misenum and spread to Capreæ. “Nothing was to be heard but the shrieks of women and children, and the cries of men; some were calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices; one was lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wished to die that they might escape the dreadful fear of death; but the greater part imagined that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy the gods and the world together.” Then came the flash of flames; then darkness and ashes, blinding, crushing, burying. Stabiae also was buried. But the destruction of the two great cities is given no word; it was sudden and complete. The ruins show they were shattered by an earthquake. Then showers of broken lava rushed upon Herculaneum; while Pompeii, farther away, was reached only by the cinder-showers. Dion Cassius tells us the people were seated in the theatres when the shock came.

In their terror, every object was distorted and magnified. “A multitude of men, of superhuman stature, resembling giants, appeared sometimes on the mountains, sometimes in the environs; stones and smoke were thrown out; then the giants seemed to rise again, while the sounds of trumpets were heard.”

Cassius, however, wrote a century and a half after the disaster; and the chief value of his testimony is to show how terrible and lasting an impression had been made upon the Campanians, from whom he derived his narrative.

After the desolation, the site of Pompeii was searched for such relics as might be of practical use elsewhere. The search was rough and destructive. The Emperor Alexander Severus made the place a “sort of quarry from which he drew a great quantity of marbles, columns and beautiful statues which he employed in adorning the edifices which he constructed at Rome. Modern research has discovered but few gold and silver articles, coins, and statues. It has developed however, a far more fearful and faithful picture of the eruption than has been given by any historian. The clouds of falling ashes so enveloped each object as to preserve an exact impression, from which casts have been made, showing every curve and line, even to the texture of the clothes. So we look upon the death-agony, and conceive the terrors of the scene.

Here is the arena. Here were skeletons; perhaps of gladiators already slain; perhaps of wounded men, unable to rise, who rolled and gasped, and struggled in the choking gloom. There is the prison; you may see the fetters still round the leg bones of the inmates.

Here stood the temple of Isis. On that pedestal was a beautiful image of her, draped in purple and gold. In the next room lay a priest beside the battered wall, with axe in hand. In the next room sat a priest overtaken at his dinner. In other cloisters lay other priests, who had remained at the temple, perhaps deeming Isis would protect them in that awful hour. Close by the prison door lay a skeleton with a handful of silver coins. Mayhap some one had perished there while endeavoring to bribe the jailor to release a prisoned friend. Close by that column, in his narrow niche, a Roman sentry stood, full armed; observing to the last, stern, unflinching obedience to superior powers, who neglected to relieve him in the terror of the time.

In the vault of a beautiful suburban villa of Diomed, lay eighteen adults, a boy, and an infant, huddled together in attitudes terribly expressive of the agony of a lingering death. To the skulls of the children still clung their long, blonde hair. There was the impress left by the bust of a young girl of striking beauty. Near the garden gate without the house were two skeletons; one with a bunch of keys and a quantity of money; the other with a number of silver vases. Doubtless the family had thought to escape by retiring to the well-provisioned cellar; while two slaves endeavored to profit by the confusion to escape with their booty. The stifling sulphureous vapor found them out.

In the house of the Faun stood the skeleton of a woman; her hands raised over her head. Her scattered jewels lay about the floor. Endeavoring at length to leave the house, she found the doorway blocked with ashes. The flooring of the upper rooms began to fall, and she lifted her arms in vain attempt to stay the crumbling roof. Thus was she found.

In a garden near by a woman was found seven feet from the earth. She had surmounted many obstacles, but perished as she scaled a wall.

Beneath a staircase lay a man who had with him a vast treasure of gold and silver. He had preserved it at a terrible cost. Near by were five others who had met a similar fate. They lay fifteen feet above the earth. Plunderers were these, overpowered by a rush of mephitic gas while delving for buried treasures.

Here lay two bodies, feet to feet--mother and daughter, perhaps. The former lay outstretched and tranquil; the young girl of fifteen, in an attitude expressive of frightful agony. Her legs are drawn up and her hands clinched. With one hand she had drawn her veil about her head, to screen herself from the ashes and smoke. The form and texture of her dress are clearly seen; and through its rents the fair young skin appears like polished marble.

Close by lay a young woman of high rank; young, richly dressed and beautiful. One upraised arm and her clenched hands tell plainer than words her agony and despair. A man--tall, stalwart, in coarse dress and nail-studded sandals, lay at hand. Upon his back, with straightened limbs and extended arms, he had resolved, since unable to escape, to die like a man. His powerful features are clearly shown, and a portion of his moustache adheres to the plaster cast.

Such are sights from which the veil of time has at last been lifted. How many perished in that fearful outbreak we shall never know. Seven hundred skeletons have been found in one-third of the city of Pompeii. Perhaps two thousand perished there. But of the scores who fled from the city, from suburban villas, from villages along the mountain, and who were overtaken by the fiery storm ere they reached a place of safety, who shall tell? Who may declare the fate of the lady who appealed to the Roman admiral Pliny for relief? Such questions each may determine for himself. History will preserve an eternal silence.

Such are the facts concerning the first great historic eruption of Vesuvius. That volcanic phenomena were known to the ancients we have already seen; but the character of Vesuvius seems to have been unsuspected. The Greeks knew of the mountain top as a depressed plain, covered with groves and wild vines. Spartacus and his gladiators, with their thousands of followers, had their fortified camp there. Strabo called it a volcanic mountain, but Pliny the elder did not include it in his list of volcanoes. The fertile, rounded slopes were covered with well-tilled fields.

But the neighboring regions were active, though Vesuvius was not. Pithecusa, the modern Ischia, was often and terribly shaken, and various attempts to settle upon it were in consequence abandoned. Poisonous gases poured forth, even when there was no active eruption.

Still nearer Vesuvius lay the noted lake Avernus, which in Roman mythology was the gateway of hell. It was said to exhale noxious vapors so powerful that birds could not cross it. At the present day it is only a pretty lake, without any unusual properties. It appears to cover an extinct crater.

In the year 63 a great earthquake was felt in the Vesuvian region. Hundreds of lives were lost, and great damage was done in many cities; and numerous lighter shocks occurred during the next sixteen years. No one seems to have apprehended any danger from the mountain. How long it had remained dormant is unknown. But Pompeii and Herculaneum are both built upon lava beds. That Pompeii itself was a very old city is clearly established. In general outline it is elliptical, nearly two miles in circuit, the entire area being one hundred and sixty acres. Characters upon many of the foundation stones would seem to indicate a period earlier than the Etruscan occupation; while other portions, especially the towers, are certainly of later date. It is quite fair to suppose that Vesuvius, from these facts, had lain quiet for a thousand years or more.

One effect of this first eruption of Vesuvius was to break down the western wall of the crater and destroy the entire side of the mountain next the sea, leaving as the only remains of the ancient crater a little ridge on the south flank, and that portion, which under the name of Somma, still encircles the present cone.

From the time of its first eruption, the restlessness of Vesuvius has been well observed. The next action occurred in the year 203. In the meantime the sides of the crater had become overgrown with brushwood and forest trees, and the basin itself was a favorite haunt of wild boars. In the year 472 the mountain broke forth with more violence than at either of the former periods. The roaring was simply indescribable. The clouds of ashes spread over the entire adjacent region. Houses toppled down miles away. Scores of people were suffocated. The ashes fell in showers at Constantinople and Tripoli.

Other eruptions followed in 512, 685, and 993. No stream of molten lava issued at any of these. But in 1036, a great eruption took place, during which, we are told, the lava poured forth from fissures in the sides, as well as from the top, and ran in a broad and deep stream into the sea. Thirteen years later another similar outbreak occurred; then ninety years passed without any disturbance.

Of these eruptions, little beyond the bare fact is known. But from the time of the last one referred to, 1139, scientific men have carefully watched each outbreak. In 1198, the neighboring crater of Solfatara Lake was in eruption; in 1302, Ischia, dormant over fourteen hundred years, exhibited wonderful activity. For more than a year earthquakes shook the island, and at length there burst forth a lava stream from the southeast side of the mountain, flowing two miles, to the sea. Many houses were destroyed during the two months’ eruption; and not a few of the inhabitants abandoned the island. But Vesuvius was quiet till 1306. Again it broke forth in 1500. During this time Ætna was in a state of unwonted activity.

The eruption of 1538 broke forth at the foot of the mountain, and was marked by some peculiar features. The plain between Avernus, Monte Barbaro, and the sea, was first raised a little, and many cracks made in it, from some of which water issued. The sea retreated about two hundred paces, leaving many fish on the sands at the disposal of the people of Pozzuoli, a little watering place on the Bay of Baiæ. On the evening of September 29, numerous shocks of earthquake occurred, and about two o’clock in the night an immense fissure opened near the lake and extended toward the town. Smoke, fire, stones, and mud made of ashes, were vomited furiously, the whole process being attended by a terrible roaring, as of continual loudest thunder. Stones and masses of pumice larger than an ox were thrown out. The gulf in the town widened, and not a few houses were broken to pieces, or swallowed up in the chasm.

The large stones were thrown about as high as a crossbow would carry, and then fell, sometimes into the lake, sometimes into the chasm again; but mostly upon either side of it. The mud was ash-colored, very liquid at first but rapidly thickening; and within thirty-six hours the site of Pozzuoli was covered by a volcanic cone. A contemporary chronicler, present at the time, says this cone was one thousand paces in height; by which he probably meant slant height. The cone at present is four hundred and forty feet above the Bay of Naples. Two days later it again began to cast forth stones and ashes; and again on the seventh day. Several persons who had ascended the hill were killed in this sudden outbreak by falling stones, or smothered by the sulphurous vapors. This “Monte Nuovo” or New Mountain, is a mile and a half in circumference at the base, and four hundred and twenty-one feet deep. It is apparent, then, that its bottom is nineteen feet above the sea level. The Lucrine Lake was almost filled up. Only a shallow pool remains.

Falconi writes that from Naples the flames were seen, bursting forth in the night, between the hot-baths and Tripergola. The next morning might be seen the poor people flying in terror, begrimed with the black and muddy shower, which continued throughout the day. Flying from death, death was painted in their countenances. Some bore their children in their arms; some carried sacks full of goods; some led donkeys loaded with valuables, or such as were unable to walk.

The few eruptions after 1039 had been feeble. We find the mountain coming to be regarded as extinct as a volcanic crater. Nearly five centuries passed. Bracini, who visited it in 1631, writes that “the crater was about five miles in circumference, and above a thousand feet deep; its sides were covered with brushwood, and at the bottom was a plain on which cattle grazed. In the woody parts wild boars frequently harbored. In one part of the plain, covered with ashes, were three small pools; one filled with hot and bitter water, another salter than the sea, and a third hot but tasteless.” Such was the general character of the crater in A. D., 78, save that it was not so deep.

In December, 1631, with a sudden, tremendous roar, the mountain flamed into action. This outbreak has never been surpassed in fury and destructiveness by any eruption of Vesuvius, unless we except the one which destroyed Pompeii. The fatalities between the two eruptions had been few, the most of the mischief being damage to property. One of the eruptions failed to throw out any marked amount of matter of any sort.

But in 1631 the woods and pastures, vines, and fields within the crater, were annihilated. Explosion followed explosion in swift succession. The great crater was filled with molten rock. Stream after stream poured swiftly forth, till seven rivers of fire were desolating the land. Crops were fired by the cinder showers. Millions of tons of ashes were scattered over the land. The mountain slope was dotted with ruined villages. Resina, a populous little town on the site of Herculaneum was completely destroyed. Storms of wind and rain swept the mountain, and the huge rivers of mud buried whatever had escaped the lava and ashes. The crater itself was shattered and nearly destroyed. Hundreds of cattle were destroyed by the fiery storm. Not less than eighteen hundred people perished in this great convulsion. Thirty-five years later another outbreak occurred; and since then the mountain has been in constant activity.

The next unusual activity of especial note occurred in 1737. Breislak has estimated the outflow of lava at

10,237,096 cubic meters; enough to cover a square mile twelve and a half feet in depth. Immense quantities of white ashes were thrown out, and the entire mountain was filled with rents and fissures, from which poured volumes of noxious vapors that suffocated man and beast. The quantity of ashes thrown out doubtless exceeded the volume of lava. In 1766 occurred another unusual convulsion, the mountain continuing vigorously active from March till December, vomiting lava streams and huge volcanic “bombs.” These last are masses of lava enclosing a bubble of gas, which is set free by the breaking of the bomb as it falls. In 1779 the lava streams for a time threatened Naples itself.

Sir William Hamilton, long time English ambassador in Italy, has left a careful record of the eruption of 1793-94. Passing by such features as, common to all its eruptions, we have noted elsewhere, we may note the more striking particulars: Millions of heated stones were thrown high in the air, and fell in beautiful curves about the cone. It might be likened to the bursting stars of our pyrotechnic displays. Nearly half Vesuvius was covered with fire. “Huge masses of white smoke were vomited forth by the disturbed mountain, and formed themselves at a height of many thousands of feet above the crater into a huge, ever-moving canopy, through which, from time to time, were hurled pitch-black jets of volcanic dust, and dense vapors, mixed with cascades of red-hot rocks and scoriæ. The rain from the cloud canopy was scalding hot.”

“As the lava rushed forth from its imprisonment it streamed a liquid, white and brilliantly pure river, which burned for itself a smooth channel through a great arched chasm in the side of the mountain. It flowed with the clearness of honey in regular channels, cut finer than art can imitate and glowing with all the splendor of the sun.” Various were the effects of stones thrown in. “Light bodies of five, ten or fifteen pounds weight, made no impression; but bodies of sixty, seventy and eighty pounds were seen to form a kind of bed on the surface of the lava and float away with it. A stone of three hundred weight that had been thrown out by the crater, lay near the source of the current of lava. I raised it up on one end and then let it fall in upon the liquid lava, when it gradually sank beneath the surface and disappeared. If I wished to describe the manner in which it acted upon the lava, I should say that it was like a loaf of bread thrown into a bowl of very thick honey, which gradually involves itself in the heavy liquid and then slowly sinks to the bottom.”

As it flowed down the mountain the brilliant whiteness disappeared. Then it began to wrinkle, where flowing slowly, like the cream on a pan of milk when poured off. Crusts formed, which were speedily cracked to pieces, as the current underneath pressed on. On such crusts a person may cross the stream, if not particular as to singeing his boots. Being cooled when near the bottom, yet forced on by the pressure behind, the whole mass “resembled nothing so much as a heap of unconnected cinders from an iron foundry, rolling slowly along and falling with a rattling noise over one another.”

This eruption continued from February, 1793, to July, 1794. Rocks were hurled two thousand feet into the air. The lava flowed from fifteen different sources, and pouring in one stream from twelve to forty feet thick, flowed three hundred and eighty feet into the sea, requiring but six hours from the time of the outbreak to reach the shore. The sea boiled for one hundred yards around. The town of Torre del Greco was destroyed, and a number of persons were killed. The natives insisted, when the paroxysm was over, on rebuilding on the old site. The Neapolitans have a jest concerning their own exemption from the calamities which Torre has endured: “Naples sins and Torre is punished.” The lava of this discharge is estimated at about twenty-one million cubic metres.

Several eruptions of Vesuvius have occurred during the present century. Of these, the most notable are those of 1822 and 1872. They have given us exact information upon a point where formerly there was only conjecture, viz: the height which the material thrown out may reach.

In 1822, the ashes for twelve days fell in a continuous shower. The lava which had boiled up and hardened till the appearance of a depressed crater was lost was blown away. An immense abyss was formed, three-fourths of a mile in length and two thousand feet deep. The entire top of the cone was then blown away. Masses of lava weighing many tons were hurled two or three miles. Darkness prevailed in broad day, as far away as Amalfi, where the ashes fell to the depth of several inches. The dense column of ashes and vapor was thrown ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. In no known eruption has the electrical display been so brilliant and continuous. The roll of thunder could be clearly distinguished from the rumble of the volcano.

In recent years an observatory has been erected on the mountain, and all its phenomena carefully noted. During the eruption of 1872 instantaneous photography was pressed into service. A comparison of the whole view with the height of the mountain, showed that the vapors and fragments were thrown twenty thousand feet into the air--nearly four miles. This outburst began on April 24, and reached its climax in two days. The entire mountain filled with fissures and cracks--in the words of Prof. Palmieri, “sweated fire.” Enormous volumes of steam poured from the crater, with such a prodigious roar, that the terrified Neapolitans rushed from their houses, and spent the night in the open air. The lava floods rushed down the mountain side; and one of them destroyed two villages, besides many country houses adjacent. The whole region for several days quivered with shocks of earthquake.

Such have been the more important eruptions of Vesuvius. Its position, by an ancient and populous city, has made it the most celebrated of volcanoes. There seems no doubt that it is supplied from the same source which feeds the others in the neighborhood, as well as Mt. Ætna. When Vesuvius is quiet, Ætna is active, and vice versa. Close observation has established a well-defined daily periodicity: so that the most favorable period for visiting the crater may always be known beforehand.

In fine, about sixty eruptions of Vesuvius are on record. Of these, twenty-three were during the last century, and twenty-five during this. The activity of the entire region seems on the increase.