NAPLES AND VESUVIUS 319 



The bay is as fine as ever, but it is a stage-curtain beauty, not the homely 

 loveliness of Florence. I had a long walk this morning, and saw a lot of geo- 

 logy of a curious sort, much that will count me hereafter. My German is still 

 waiting for me to go to JStna, but I have not promised. I shall be glad to 

 hear to-morrow that it had [word illegible] and burst, for I don't want to 

 go farther from my belongings. 



This is a swell hotel, so I shall take myself off. Every knave "speaks a 

 little English " and will put it in the bill. The inn in Rome suited me, no Eng- 

 lish, French, or German, and low prices. I 'm tired and must to bed. . . . 



P. S. March 14. ... Have just been at Vesuvius, so that is off for an- 

 other term of years. 



Hotel Nobile, NAPLES, March 15, 1882. 



Professor Guescard advises me not to try JEtna, as the things I want to see 

 may all be covered with snow. So I shall give that up. In place of it I shall 

 work up some problems here. I feel tired to-day; I have therefore done 

 nothing but work at the University and search for Vesuvian photographs. 

 To-morrow I shall be all right and shall do the Phlegraean Fields between here 

 and Baiae. The next day I go to Ischia. ... I wonder where my geological 

 eyes were fifteen years ago. It must have been some other fellow who was here. 



Mr. Shaler's notes on Vesuvius and Naples were so hastily 

 written that in most instances they are undecipherable; it has 

 been possible, however, to make out some of them, though 

 perhaps not the most significant. The first relates to the ascent 

 of Vesuvius. 



. . . Road to east and main observatory road, lava quite wide, yet covered 

 with thin sheet of cinders. Aloe at 1200 feet slightly frosted. Beautiful 

 to see the grass and flowers creeping over lava ; the rapilli fill crevices and 

 decay rapidly, because of large face and vesicular nature. Composite seem 

 to be the best plants to begin. . . . 



The mode of explosion in the crater was exactly like a large quarry mine, 

 the steam smelled slightly of sulphur, but was as easily breathed as or- 

 dinary steam, not at all suffocating when it thickened the air so that one 

 could not see a hundred feet. At the minute of uprush of stones (several tons 

 flying at once) the heat was great. At three hundred feet distance stones per- 

 ceptibly red in all their first flight, and partly so when falling, sometimes 

 splashing where they fell, again rolling up into a loop as they rushed down 

 the slope. . . . Saw no secondary explosion in stones; necessary to watch 

 the stones so as to dodge, notes therefore imperfect. 



