THE NEAPOLITANS 321 



As I came out of Naples, Vesuvius was half hidden in a majestic army of 

 cumulus clouds that were lifting from the sea ; from one to three thousand 

 feet was hidden by this cloud that cast a vast shadow below it. The whole 

 mountain seemed strangely weird, a thing of speculation, the ghost of moun- 

 tains that had been. Vesuvius is constantly extending its lines; as it rises 

 higher the lava penetrates farther from the base. It will probably be not 

 more than a century before San Giorgio Borra and Ponticelli will be in dan- 

 ger, and at the rate of extension Pompeii and Naples will be menaced within 

 two hundred years. There is no reason why this great rock mushroom should 

 not gain the size of ^Itna and absorb all the region about as far as the 

 Phlegrsean Fields. The total mass of the mountain has about doubled in 

 eighteen hundred years, and its growth in the last two hundred and fifty 

 years has been more rapid than before. . . . 



The generally good climate is shown in the ruddiness of visage and gen- 

 erally excellent physique of the natives. The people are small ; I did not see 

 a six-foot native nor one very brawny; the porters carry light burdens. The 

 women have comely faces, all on one type, flat, small heads, good eyes with no 

 brightness, small, short-fingered hands. Now and then there is a mark of Afri- 

 can blood, no trace of Greek. It is a low population, except the gentry, which 

 is very high. The gentry have beautiful manners; they seem to me the best 

 I have ever seen. I asked a venerable-looking old aristocrat my way; he laid 

 his hand on my arm and told it me in accents that were full of a certain 

 subtle sympathy. Now and then a grand face among the poor; one of a man 

 far gone in illness, which I saw in a window, haunts me still a face out of 

 the past. Naples has had no art, architecture, music, religion, or anything 

 else. Nowhere else is nature so overpowering as at Naples, so charming and 

 so little inspiring. 



In the car from Rome another patent American in the corner; all night 

 no sound out of him. A young fellow going away on a journey; four men 

 and three young women to see him off, a roar of lamentation, greater than 

 attended the going of regiments to the field. Thrice they kissed all around, 

 thrice he descended for another bout of kissing and wailing. He was a lean, 

 worthless-looking, dirty youth, with a large, ragged carpet-bag. When he 

 was seated he again and again went over some photographs ; when he fell 

 asleep he rolled on the floor but apologized with much grace. Dignified- 

 looking man of thirty-five, with a young woman of the harlot class, who 

 smoked, spat, laughed, and wept by turns. He was shy and seemed ill at 

 ease with his burden. 



The Italian railway system belongs principally to the government, a large 

 part of their debt has gone to this important work. . . . About Naples the 

 soil is amazingly fertilized by the volcanic ashes that come upon it; the erup- 

 tion of 1872 put three inches over the land for twenty miles about. 



