THE MOUNTAINEER 73 



J 



disappointment fled before the thought that, of course, the brilliant colors 

 of the sunset had hidden the volcanic fires and that night would satisfy all 

 expectations. Dinner served under the electric lights in the shut-in garden 

 of the Hotel de la Riviera perhaps softened my feelings, for when, on going 

 out to the street fringing, the bay, I saw Vesuvius grand in the light of a 

 full moon, it did not matter if there were no hints of subterranean fires. 

 The mountain was there and reared its crown above the noisy city and the 

 silent sea keeping watch now as in the days of Pliny. 



During the days of delightful sightseeing I planned to visit the volcano 

 under the guidance of Thomas Cook & Sons, and with the help of an 

 obliging hotel clerk I found myself at eight o'clock one morning with a 

 party of my countrymen ready for the ascent. How good it was to hear 

 the American voice, even the slang of four Philadelphia students as they 

 expressed their sentiments against Italian travel, was refreshing. The out- 

 skirts of the city were flanked by green fields, and we wondered at the 

 apparent poverty of the cultivators, as shown by the desolate earthen 

 huts and the almost utter nakedness of the peasants. The earth fairly 

 teemed with life ; vegetation was so thick that the ground was seldom seen. 

 Groves of orange, lemon, olive and fig supported long branches of grape 

 vines, which reached out tendrils interlocking the trees, and in the squares 

 and oblongs thus formed, corn, tomatoes and other vegetables grew up to 

 the very edge of the lava thrown out by the eruption of last year. A 

 passenger asked, "Do they pick off the leaves to give more room for the 

 grapes?" and we saw there were more bunches of grapes than leaves. It 

 seems this is due to the great amount of plant food in the volcanic ash. It 

 was hard to realize that only a year ago this whole region lay under a 

 blanket of ashes, that what had then caused death and destruction was 

 today a benefactor in producing such abundant growth. 



The road gradually ascended and we came to the city of Resina built 

 over Herculaneum. We caught but a glimpse of the shaft-like excavations 

 in the gray ground as we hurried along in a carryall from one electric tram 

 to another. The inhabitants of the stone houses above the ground know that 

 they may suffer the same fate as those in the stone houses below, buried 

 in the year 79, and yet they sing and laugh and live their life with seem- 

 ing indifference. The car now has the cog system and the country rapidly 

 drops downward while the scene widens until we reach the Observatory. 

 This building stands on a ridge which an ancient tongue of lava piled high 

 on the slope. A quarter of a mile over the lava and we leave the train, as 

 from here on the track was destroyed last year. 



We land in a little rectangle of rails where we are assailed hy a number 

 of guides. Just outside are chairs and horses for those who do not wish 

 to ascend on foot. Our party of twenty refused the clamors of the guides 

 and started out over the rugged, twisted masses of lava, the guides follow- 

 ing, continuing their solicitations. Now we saw that the white streaks 

 were great walls built to keep ])ack the masses of ashes in rain storms 

 from overwhelming the lowlands. The men set a good pace through the 

 sickle-shaped valley that lies between Monte Somma and the ol)servatory 

 ridge on one side and Vesuvius on the other. Monte Somma is the moun- 

 tain whose green slope hides Vesuvius from the north, and from our valley 

 we see that the abrupt bluff of Monte Somma rises far above our heads. 

 Later I was told by the American volcanologist. who stayed at Vesuvius 

 during the recent great eruption, that the two mountains had the same 



