AN ASCENT OF VESUVIUS. 123 



1835, on arriving at the top, you found yourself on a plain of con- 

 siderable extent, covered with black ashes, and daubed over with 

 yellow, pink, and orange incrustations of sulphur. At every short 

 interval were large cracks arid chasms, from which issued a hot 

 sulphurous steam, that ran flickering along the ground, and was most 

 oppressive to the breathing. But the guides * and hangers on of the 

 mountain were regardless of it ; and wherever a rent was larger, or 

 more convenient, they crept into it in parties, for the purpose of doz- 

 ing, or eating their dinners : and it is difficult to decide whether the 

 warmth attracted them, or whether they selected it in order to steam 

 away a few of their vermin. The ashes all over this plain are sensi- 

 bly warm to the feet. If a stick is thrust deep into them, smoke will 

 issue from the hole ; and, by throwing one's self at full length on the 



f round, the convulsions within the mountain may be felt, like the 

 eating of an animal's pulse. 



In advancing along this plain, from which a weak pair of lungs 

 would soon be driven by the dreadful stench, the explosions from the 

 crater become more and more audible, like a continued feu \de joie, 

 and stones and pieces of lava are seen dancing up into the air, 

 although the hollow from which they are projected is not yet visible. 

 But soon, the plain inclines downwards, like the edge of a sand hill, 

 and the whole scene is exposed to view with the unexpectedness of a 

 theatrical exhibition. Quite at the bottom of a vast amphitheatre, 

 though by no means in the centre of it, appeared a large oval 

 aperture, which might be about a hundred feet across at its widest 

 diameter. It had been formed only eight days ; and the old cavity, 

 from which the fire had before issued, was yawning by the side of it, 

 closed up and skinned over with cinders and scoriae. From the new 

 mouth arose a column of dense milk-white smoke, which did not issue 

 steadily and uninterruptedly, but was spurted out in jets like the steam 

 from the old-fashioned steam-engines. The discharges succeeded 

 each other nearly at regular intervals of a few seconds each ; and one 

 could always tell beforehand the precise moment when one would 

 happen, for an'explosion like a firing of muskets was'heard within the 

 mountain, and then, two or three seconds after, out darted the smoke 

 accompanied by a shower of red-hot lumps of lava, which were shot up 

 five or six hundred feet into the air. Their colour varied from a 

 brick-red to the brightest vermilion, which [shone out in spite of the 

 rays of a noon-day |sun. Sometimes the smaller lumps, when first 

 exploded, were of a brilliant pink, and, if you watched their course in 

 the air, you could see them fading away duller and duller, till they 

 were quite black by the time they reached the bottom, or fell back 

 into the crater from which they had issued. It was difficult for the 

 eye, in the broad day-light, to form an adequate estimate of the heat 



* Besides the guides, &c., we had another companion, whom we should scarcely 

 have calculated on during such an excursion : this was no other than an armed police- 

 man, or soldier, whose duty it is to accompany and protect strangers from the Hermi- 

 tage to the summit. One might have hoped, on a spot like this, to be free from all 

 human danger ; but several instances have been known of robberies committed on the 

 crater of Vesuvius : the crowds of rich strangers are a great temptation to the brigands ; 

 and the loneliness of the spot renders a military protector by no means unnecessary. 



