ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 21 



the forerunner and the warning (if that warning could 

 have been understood) of the first eruption of Vesuvius 

 on record, which followed sixteen years afterwards in 

 the year 79. Before that time none of the ancients had 

 any notion of its being a volcano, though Pompeii itself 

 is paved with its lava. The crater was probably filled, 

 or at least the bottom occupied, by a lake ; and we 

 read of it as the stronghold of the rebel chief Spartacus, 

 who, when lured there by the Roman army, escaped 

 with his followers by clambering up the steep sides by 

 the help of the wild vines that festooned them. The 

 ground since the first earthquake in 63 had often been 

 shaken by slight shocks, when at length, in August 79, 

 they became more numerous and violent, and, on the 

 night preceding the eruption, so tremendous as to 

 threaten everything with destruction. A morning of 

 comparative repose succeeded, and the terrified inhab- 

 itants of those devoted towns no doubt breathed more 

 freely, and hoped the worst was over ; when, about one 

 o'clock in the afternoon, the Elder Pliny, who was 

 stationed in command of the Roman fleet at Misenum in 

 full view of Vesuvius, beheld a huge black cloud ascend- 

 ing from the mountain, which, " rising slowly always 

 higher," at last spread out aloft like the head of one of 

 those picturesque flat-topped pines which lorm such an 

 ornament of the Italian landscape. The meaning of 

 such a phenomenon was to Pliny and to every one a 

 mystery. We know now too well what it imports, and 

 they were not long left in doubt From that cloud 

 descended stones, ashes, and pumice; and the cloud 



