Part 13

I may as well explain here, that on our way back we invented a new plan for paying him, and at the same time avoiding trouble. When we neared the hotel on our return, I counted out the money in francs and half francs, and threw in a few copper coins by way of adding to the confusion. With the proper amount in my hand, I stepped from the carriage, and waited until my three companions were a dozen yards away; then I dropped the money into the hands of the driver, and started at a rapid walk to overtake my friends. Before he had finished counting the money we were inside of the hotel. As we walked up stairs, I heard a volley of Neapolitan and French oaths following us into the building, and rolling through the hall like a small cloud of smoke.

We started from Naples in the direction of Vesuvius, passing through several villages on our road to Pompeii. The road was excellent, being paved or macadamized the entire distance, and ornamented with houses and beggars in about equal proportions.

[Sidenote: PERTINACIOUS BEGGARS.]

The beggars deserve great credit for the study they have devoted to the perfection of their art. Sores are cultivated as a handsome man would cultivate his mustache; and as for a withered leg, it is worth a fortune to its possessor. Every time our carriage halted, the beggars surrounded it, as flies in July surround a lump of sugar, and pretty nearly for the same reason, as they wanted something on which to exist. They accosted us in two or three languages, Italian of course predominating. We told them, in French, in English, and in German, to go away, and that we would give them nothing; but they stuck to us with the most unruffled pertinacity. They had heard all that before, and knew that if they were adhesive, they had a good prospect of extracting something. I tried a new plan on them, and found that it worked well.

Assuming an air of great indignation, and with as much severity in my face as I could command, I addressed them very loudly, with my hands extended, in Russian and Chinese. Those languages were new to them, and fearing that it was some horrid imprecation, several of them dropped away. I afterwards found the plan quite successful, not only with Italian beggars, but with beggars of every nation. Tell them in any language to which they are accustomed, that you will give them nothing, and, if you are so minded, consign them to the infernal regions, and they do not mind it; but if you assume a priestly attitude, and utter something very solemnly in a language they do not understand, you have a fair prospect of getting rid of them.

[Sidenote: BEGGING AS A SCIENCE.]

At one place, on the road to Pompeii, there is a small hill. From the foot to the summit the distance is not more than one to two hundred feet; but the slope is so steep, that horses, in ascending it, do not travel faster than a walk. At the foot of this hill, four beggars—middle-aged women—were located; and they evidently had purchased a monopoly, or possibly a grant from government for the possession of the spot. In front of a small wine shop they had erected a pavilion, and each of them had a comfortable chair. They watched the place, and attended closely to business during the entire day. When they saw a carriage approaching, they left their chairs, and proceeded to the road, adhering closely to the vehicle until it reached the top of the hill. They begged persistently until they received what they demanded, or the top of the hill was reached. Then they returned leisurely to their chairs, and waited for the next customer.

If there was but a single carriage at a time, all of them worked it. If there were two carriages, the beggars divided into couples; and if by any chance there were four carriages together, the professionals scattered, and each of them took a vehicle. I drove out on this road several times, and always found it begged by the same persons. I proposed one day to my friends to engage five carriages, and drive them out there together. I thought that we might kill the beggars by causing them to die of grief and rage at seeing a carriage pass without being able to annoy its occupants.

[Sidenote: MAKING MACARONI.]

Another object of interest along the road, and closely associated with the beggars, is the manufacture of macaroni. I did not enter the houses to see how the stuff was made; but I saw great quantities of it drying on frames in front of the places of its manufacture. One of my companions, who had witnessed the process, said they made macaroni by putting some dough around a long hole, and letting it dry.

He said the holes did not cost anything, and the dough was not expensive. “And that is the reason,” said he, “why the confounded stuff is so cheap.”

I was rather fond of macaroni as an article of diet; and my friend advised me, if I wished to continue so, to remain in blissful ignorance of the manner of its preparation, and not to ask any questions.

I took his advice, and to this day do not know much about the process.

One thing in connection with macaroni, which amused me much, was the dexterity of the chickens in eating it.

A string of macaroni in its soft state, four or five feet long, is hung across a horizontal bar in such a way that the ends are a foot or so from the ground. The frames look like candle-moulds, with freshly moulded candles hanging from them. The macaroni, as it hangs, is pretty thick, there being just space enough between the sticks to allow them to dry. When the stuff is soft, chickens can easily eat it. As it hangs from the frames, these birds would get beneath them, and bite off the ends of the perpendicular sticks.

The young chickens were rather awkward; but the old hens and roosters were very successful. I watched one venerable old cock under a frame, and studied his performance. He elevated his head as if he were peering through a gun barrel up to the sky. He took careful aim, and then jumped upwards, with his mouth open. The soft macaroni went down his throat a couple of inches or so, as a sausage might go down the throat of a terrier; and at the exact instant when his head was highest, he closed his bill, and nipped off the morsel. I saw him take half a dozen bites in that way, and he did not miss his mark a single time in the whole performance.

We had pleasant glimpses of the Bay of Naples, though not as many as we could have wished on account of the height of the fences. After a drive of something more than an hour, we reached the gate of Pompeii. Dismounting from our carriage, and paying two francs to the custodian, we entered the ancient city.

[Sidenote: DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII.]

Pompeii was violently shaken by an earthquake in the year 63. Several temples tumbled down along with the colonnade of the Forum. The theatres and many tombs and houses were also overthrown. Nearly every family went from the place; and it was some time before they returned. The senate hesitated for some time whether to rebuild the city or not, and finally decided to do so. The work of rebuilding was going on quite vigorously, when all at once came the terrible eruption of 79. It buried Pompeii under a deluge of stones and ashes, and buried Herculaneum under lava and liquid mud.

These cities and many villages were wiped out in a single day, and a large region of country was depopulated. After the catastrophe, some of the inhabitants returned, and made excavations for recovering their valuables. Some robbers also crept into the city. The Emperor Titus entertained the idea of cleaning and restoring the city, and sent two senators to examine the ground; but the magnitude of the work frightened the government, and the restoration was never undertaken. In time Pompeii became almost forgotten, and its site was lost. For more than a dozen centuries the locality where Pompeii had stood was unknown.

In 1748, under the reign of Charles III., when the discovery of Herculaneum had attracted the attention of the world to that locality, some vine-dressers struck upon some old walls, and unearthed a few statues. The king ordered some excavations to be made in the vicinity; but it was not until eight years later that any one supposed that they were exhuming Pompeii. Since that time the work of excavation has gone on with a great many intervals of inactivity. Whenever the government makes an appropriation, or some crowned head or other wealthy personage makes an addition to the Pompeian fund, the work is prosecuted; but as soon as the money is expended the work stops.

It is now more than a hundred years since the excavation began, and the third part of the city is not yet uncovered.

Since 1860, the whole system of work and management has been reformed, and moralized, as it were. All the guides and door-keepers are under the control of the government.

The visitor pays two francs at the gate, and is guided about the city by a man clad in uniform. Notices are posted in all the modern languages, telling visitors not to give money to the guides under any pretence whatever, and forbidding the guides to receive the money. This is all very well as far as it goes; but human ingenuity is able to get around the rule.

[Sidenote: DODGING A REGULATION.]

We had a guide who spoke French fluently, and was a very polite and agreeable fellow. He took pains to call our attention to one of the signs, and assured us that he could not receive a penny under any circumstances. But at almost every step he had photographs to sell. Whenever we found anything particularly interesting, out from his pocket came a package of photographs, and of course we purchased. By the time we had finished our journey, we had bought photographs enough to stock a small store; and the profit on the transaction was probably six times as much as the guide would have wrung from us had the old system been in vogue. It is very evident that the government winks at this transaction; otherwise the guides would not be allowed to sell photographs or anything else.

We walked through streets silent and deserted, except by groups of visitors like ourselves, and the occasional patrolmen or guides. We walked on the pavement where, two thousand years ago, chariots rolled along, and we saw on those pavements the marks of the chariot wheels as plainly as if they had been worn during the past month. At the drinking fountains on the street corners, we could see where the Pompeian stopped when he was thirsty. The stone at the orifice, whence the water poured out, was worn away by the many applications of Pompeian lips.

[Sidenote: SCENES IN THE STREET.]

We looked into the ovens as they were on the day of the eruption. The bakers were preparing their store of bread, and we were shown the loaves which had been drawn from those ovens after resting there eighteen hundred years. We saw the shops of the wine merchants, the butchers, the bakers, and the men of other occupations.

We saw the names that had been painted on the door-posts, a little faded and dull, yet still legible. We sat down on benches which were unoccupied for seventeen hundred years; and we entered the dwelling-houses where, two thousand years ago, the members of the family passed their daily life. It was a picture of the past, and not of the present.

Pompeii was preserved, and not destroyed. To its inhabitant, on the day of the eruption it was destroyed; but for us who now look upon it, and study its history, it has been preserved.

The most complete bakery in Pompeii was in Herculaneum Street, and occupied an entire house.

The inner court-yard of the house contains four mills of curious construction. At a little distance they resemble hour-glasses. Imagine two large blocks of stone in the shape of cones, the upper one overset upon the lower, and you have their construction.

The lower one remained motionless, and the other was turned either by a man or a donkey. The grain was crushed between the two stones. Sometimes the servants of the establishment turned the mill. At other times slaves, for some misdemeanor, had their eyes put out, and then they were sent to work at grinding.

The story goes that, sometimes, when the millers were short of hands, they established bathing-houses around their mills, and the passers by who were caught in the trap had to work the mill. In the establishment now referred to, the machinery was turned, not by men, but by a mule, whose bones were found lying near. In the stable of the mule the racks and troughs were standing. Near the bake-ovens were the troughs where the dough was kneaded.

There was one oven which remained uninjured. It had two openings; the loaves went into one of these, in the shape of dough, and were taken out at the other opening baked. Everything seemed to be in a fine state of preservation, and the oven could be made use of again for a repetition of its work of eighteen centuries ago.

[Sidenote: STALE BREAD.]

The oven when found was full of bread. Some of the loaves were stamped to indicate that they were of wheat flour, and others to indicate that they were of bran flour. The oven had been carefully sealed, and there were no ashes in it. Eighty-one loaves were found in it, a little stale, to be sure, and very hard and black, but lying in the same order in which they were placed on the 23d of November in the year 79. The loaves weighed about a pound each. They are round, depressed in the centre, raised on the edges, and divided into eight lobes. Imagine an American pie which has been marked with the knife as if for cutting before it is placed in the oven, and you have an almost exact picture of a Pompeian loaf of bread. I did not try to eat it, partly because I prefer my bread fresh, and partly because the loaves are considered too precious to be given or sold to visitors.

Whoever goes to Pompeii thinking to find a perfect city will be very much disappointed.

The ruins of Pompeii, as the old lady said about the ruins of the Coliseum, are very much out of repair. The walls of the buildings are mostly standing, but the roofs and doors, which were constructed of wood, are gone, having rotted away in their long exposure to the moisture. Everything whatever, of wood, planks, or beams, was turned to ashes: all is uncovered, and there are no roofs to be seen.

Almost everywhere you walk under the open sky; everything is open, and if a shower were to come on, you would hardly find shelter. Imagine yourself in a city in process of building with only the first stories completed, and with no floorings for the second.

[Sidenote: ART IN POMPEII.]

Many of the statues and works of art have been carried to the Museum at Naples, so that in the old city itself, there are, comparatively, few curiosities of a portable character. The sky, the landscape, the sea-shore, the walls and the pavements are antique, and it is only the visitors and their guides that are modern. The streets are not repaired, the sidewalks are not changed, and we walk upon the same stones that were formerly trodden by the feet of the Pompeian merchant and his slave.

As we enter these narrow streets we can almost think we are quitting the century we live in, and going back to the century that witnessed the birth of Christ.

When first uncovered, the paintings of the walls were as fresh as though they were made but a week ago, the ashes having preserved them perfectly. In a few weeks or months their coloring fades, and they become dingy and hardly visible.

The Pompeians were great lovers of art; every wall is frescoed, and the mosaics on the floors are an interesting study. Statues adorn the interior of the dwellings, and abound in the public places: even the ordinary utensils of the kitchen were fashioned in a remarkable manner, and far more artistic than those of the present day. The most ordinary utensils of the household are specimens of art that evoke the admiration of every beholder.

As one walks through Pompeii he sees much to tell him that advertising is not altogether an invention of the present age. Placards and posters enlivened the streets; the walls were covered with them; and in many places there were whitewashed patches of wall, serving for the announcements which the writers wished to make public. These panels were dedicated entirely to the public business, and anybody had the right to paint upon them, in delicate and slender letters, the advertisements which we now find in the columns of the newspapers.

[Sidenote: ADVERTISING IN THE OLDEN TIME.]

Many of these announcements were of a political character, such as proclamations of candidates for public office. Pompeii was evidently swallowed up just before an election. In reading the posters you will find that sometimes it was a noble, sometimes a group of citizens, and sometimes a corporation of tradesmen, who recommended some one to the office of _ædile_ or _duumvir_. Thus Paratus nominates Pansa; Philippus nominates Caius; Felix, and Valentinus, and his associates prefer Sabinus. Sometimes the elector was in a hurry, and asked to have his candidate chosen quickly. Sometimes a dozen guilds, such as the fruiterers, the porters, the mule drivers, the salt makers, carpenters, and others, united to urge the election of somebody.

Rather curiously, we found on some of these placards that the sleepers declared their preference for somebody, and it puzzled us to know who were these friends of sleep. Perhaps they may have been gentlemen who did not like noise, or perhaps they were an association of tumultuous fellows who thus disguised themselves under an ironical title. They may have been a type of the class who are described in the present slang of New York as _roosters_.

There were advertisements of lost property, hotels announcing rooms to let, stolen horses, performances at the theatres, and various other things, such as we see in the advertising papers, and in posters on the walls at the present day.

There were some of these posters devoted to what we call _personals_. Of course they were obscurely worded, so as to be understood only by those for whom they were intended. One of my companions asserted that one advertisement read, “Julia, same place, six P. M., Tuesday;” and another said, “Scipio, come back; all will be forgiven;” and another was, “Marcus has gone west, will return next week.”

I did not see these advertisements, and make the statement only on his authority. I might have been inclined to believe it had he not declared, with the most solemn visage, that he read an advertisement thus: “Secure me a suit of rooms on the Boston steamer to-morrow.” This was too much; and I told him that business was played out.

There were inscriptions in reference to the cleanliness of the city; and some of them recalled, in terms too precise and definite for modern times, the announcement of the present day, “Commit no Nuisance.”

Pompeii was not a large city; it contained only about thirty thousand inhabitants, and was rather a suburb than a great national dwelling-place. The Rome of that day was many times larger; and when we are considering the buried city, we must remember that we are considering a small hamlet rather than a large capital.

[Sidenote: PICTURE OF THE DESTRUCTION.]

A volume might be filled with descriptions of Pompeii and its contents; the forum, the theatres, the dwellings, the tombs, the baths, the shops, the stables, the gardens, are all interesting. According to the histories, it was during a festival that the eruption took place. We may imagine the picture, that while the amphitheatre was crowded and gladiatorial combats were in progress, the earth shook, and the sky was dark with the clouds of smoke and ashes rising from the great volcano. The Pompeians rushed from the amphitheatre, and were overtaken by the shower of stones, and the deluge of ashes falling like a burning snow upon the streets; the dust fills the streets. Heaps of the burning ashes break through the houses, crushing the tiles and burning the rafters; the fire falls from story to story, and accumulates like earth thrown in to fill a trench. The amphitheatre is speedily ingulfed, and no one remains in it but the dead gladiators, and the prisoners enclosed in their cages, from which there is no escape. Those who have sheltered themselves under the shops, and in the arcade, were buried beneath the ashes and stones.

Skeletons are found everywhere, indicating how people were overtaken in their flight. Here is a fallen woman grasping a bag of jewels; near by is the skeleton of a man with a bunch of keys in one hand, and the remains of a bag of coins in the other. A woman holding a child in her arms took shelter in an oven, and was enclosed there. A soldier, faithful to his duty, remains at his post before the gate of the city, one hand upon his mouth, and the other on his spear, and in this brave attitude he died. The family of Diomed assembled in his cellar, where seventeen victims, women and children, were buried alive, clinging closely to each other. The last agony of these poor wretches is terrible to imagine.

A priest of Isis, enveloped in flames, and unable to escape into the street, cut through two walls with an axe, and fell at the foot of the third, still clutching his weapon. A goat was found crouched in an oven with its bell still attached to its neck. Prisoners were found with their ankles riveted to iron bars. Everywhere skeletons have been discovered, and they all picture the anguish and terror the sufferers endured on the day of the eruption.

[Sidenote: OBSCENITY OF THE POMPEIANS.]

Many moralists, those who consider that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed as a punishment for their crimes, are of opinion that Pompeii was also destroyed because of its wickedness. The discoveries in that city are, many of them, of a character not to be described in public prints, especially by the aid of the engraver’s art, at the present day. Some of the eardrops worn by the women were curious to behold. Lamps were fashioned in forms quite as obscene as they are fantastic; and the same may be said of the chandeliers, and of many of the utensils used in ordinary life. Curiously engraved seals are found that would hardly be suitable to impress to-day on the back of a letter, and there were paintings on many of the walls that should be covered from fastidious eyes.

Certain houses which in American cities are visited by stealth, and whose locality is, to a certain extent, shrouded in obscurity, were boldly designated by various symbols cut upon the stones of the sidewalks and upon the lintels of the doors. Many of these objects have been preserved, and are now in the Museum at Naples; they have been placed in apartments by themselves, where any curious visitor may examine them; and those who are curious in such matters I respectfully refer to the Museum. The impressions on the sidewalks and over the doors remain as they were, and may be examined by any tourist who is interested in their study.

[Sidenote: NEW EXCAVATIONS.]

In the autumn of 1876, new excavations have been commenced in Pompeii, and judge of the astonishment of the excavators, when, while digging for unknown treasures, they come to a second city beneath the one known to the reader. It has been buried there perhaps centuries before New Pompeii was built, under lava and sulphurous matter, and the architects, probably not knowing of the fact, erected their houses on top of those of their forefathers. It almost seems that Art, in the first-buried city, was far more advanced than in the latter. Marvels of art and architecture have been found, and when we enter one of those splendid edifices, and admire its paintings and statuary, we are struck with admiration for the great accomplishments of men who lived centuries before the birth of Christ.