22 ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 



itself lowered down upon the surrounding country, 

 involving land and sea in profound darkness, pierced by 

 flashes of fire more vivid than lightning. These, with 

 the volumes of ashes that began to encumber the soil, 

 and which covered the sea with floating pumice-stone ; 

 the constant heaving of the ground ; and the sudden 

 recoil of the sea, form a picture which is wonderfully 

 well described by the Younger Pliny. His uncle, ani- 

 mated by an eager desire to know what was going on, 

 and to afford aid to the inhabitants of the towns, made 

 sail for the nearest point of the coast and landed ; but 

 was instantly enveloped in the dense sulphureous vapour 

 that swept down from the mountain, and perished 

 miserably. 



(29.) It does not seem that any lava flowed on that 

 occasion. Pompeii was buried under the ashes ; Her- 

 culaneum by a torrent of mud, probably the contents of 

 the crater, ejected at the first explosion. This was most 

 fortunate. We owe to it the preservation of some of 

 the most wonderful remains of antiquity. For it is not 

 yet much more than a century ago that, in digging a 

 well at Portici near Naples, the Theatre of Herculaneum 

 was discovered, some sixty feet under ground, then 

 houses, baths, statues, and, most intere ting of all, a 

 library, full of books; and those books stul legible, and 

 among them the writings of some ancient authors which 

 had never before been met with, but which have now 

 been read, copied, and published, while hundreds and 

 hundreds, I am sorry to say, still remain unopened. 

 Pompeii was not buried so deep ; the walls of some of 



