Eruption of Vesuvius, 1867-8. 27 



Vetrana. The guides absolutely refused to ascend the cone that 

 night, so we returned to Naples, which we did not reach till three 

 in the morning, and started off again after sleep and breakfast 

 " integros accedere fontes." As we passed the scene of our last 

 night's wonder, all was changed ; the lava we watched was dead or 

 dying ; and now a new stream was making its way in the opposite 

 direction, and causing many a face in Torre del Greco to gather 

 blackness. We bore this time to the left of the molten stream, 

 still clambering over the ridges of hot scoriae, till we found firm 

 ground for our feet once more on the lava beds of 1855. 



We were now in what is called the Atrio del Cavallo; a crescent- 

 shaped corridor, which separates the cone to which the name 

 Vesuvius belongs, from the semicircular ridge called La Somma, 

 which is in all probability part of the ancient crater of the mountain 

 • — that crater in which Spartacus and his fellow gladiators were 

 besieged by CI. Pulcher — and which gave birth to the present 

 cone in the great eruption of 79, when Pompeii was destroyed. 

 Nothing can exceed the gloom of the Atrio del Cavallo. The lava 

 dykes of La Somma reminded me of one of the somberest scenes 

 of the Arabian desert. To the right of us ugly and stark and black, 

 without a scrap of vegetation, rose the cone we were presently to 

 climb, encrusted with coil on coil of the petrified lava, or overspread 

 from top to base with acres of loose scoria) and crumbling ashes. 

 We got almost round to the back of the mountain before we 

 attempted to ascend — almost out of sight of the eruption, though 

 not quite out of earshot. A steep — very steep scramble up the 

 cone brought us to the summit of what was the crater of Vesuvius 

 before the present eruption. This is now completely filled up, 

 and we walked over newly formed lava beds showered with sulphur, 

 as though with some gay yellow lichen, to the very mouth of Orcus. 

 Not forty yards from us rose the actual cone of eruption, new 

 born in the centre of the old crater, and increasing in bulk every 

 moment as it was subjected to a fresh hail of stones and ashes. Out 

 of this issued volumes of white steam, which paused and hung about 

 the crest like bales of the whitest cotton, and at intervals of three 

 or four minutes — by way of awful contrast — a still mightier column 

 shot up straight from the centre of the cauldron heavily charged 

 with cinders, which rendered it as black as the blackest smoke. 

 Beautiful it was to watch these gigantic discharges of woolly 

 blackness as they rose and spread themselves out high in air, foils 

 to the red hot stones that were tossed up along with them, and fell 

 back hissing into the crater, or rolled rattling down the cone. Our 

 guide beckoned us on, and though it was almost stifling to breathe 

 the sulphur fumes with which the air was jaundiced, we crept to the 

 side of the glowing trough down which the virgin lava was rushing 



