A POMPEIAN HOUSE. 235 
face. Extending to perhaps a fifth of the whole actual height before me (but 
covering a great deal more of the foreground in appearance), is the cultivated re- 
gion. dotted with villages, which shine out from a background of what we know 
must be vineyards and olives. The second zone is barren, and in sharp contrast 
with the former. It rises to perhaps two-thirds of the whole height, and its broad 
masses of gray are patched with moss-like spots hardly distinguishable in color, 
‘but which are really forests of oak and chestnut. All above this rose what even 
from my distant station could be recognized as naked black deserts, streaked here 
and there with snow, while above this was the terminal cone, snow-covered at the 
time I saw it, and with a depression at the summit from which slowly drifted a 
thin vapor. The railway south of Taormina runs along the coast (and is carried 
through cuttings on old lava streams, which here flowed down to the sea) until it 
reaches Catania, a city which, as every one knows, is not only built on lava, but 
which has been cut through and through by lava streams, and shaken down by 
earthquakes in recent times, and which lives from day to day at the mercy of its 
terrible neighbor. —/uly Atlantic. 
INC ALCON 
A POMPEIAN HOUSE. 
‘¢ The house which was begun to be excavated at the celebration of the cen- 
tenary of Pompeii, and is, therefore called ‘Caso del Centenario,’ and from which 
-I then saw three skeletons dug out, has proved to be the largest hitherto discov- 
ered, and is of peculiar interest. It contains two atria, two trielmia, four aleee or 
wings, a calidarium, frigidarium, and tepidarium. It occupies the entire space 
between three streets, and most likely a fourth, which has yet to be excavated. 
The vestibule is elegantly decorated, and its mosaic pavement ornamented with 
the figure of a dolphin pursued by asea horse. In the first atrium, the wails of 
which are adorned with small theatrical scenes, the pavement is sunk and broken, 
as if by an earthquake, and there is a large hole through which one sees the cel- 
lar. The second atrium is very spacious with a handsome perisytle, the columns 
—white and red stucco—being twenty-six in number. In the center is a large 
marble basin, within the edge of which runs a narrow step. On the pedestal at 
one side was found the statuette of the Faun which we lately described. The 
most interesting place in the house is an inner court or room, on one side of which 
is the niche, with tiny marble steps, often to be seen in Pompeian houses. ‘The 
fiescoes on the walls are very beautiful. Close to the floor runs a wreath of leaves 
about a quarter of a yard wide, with alternately a lizard and a stork. Above it, 
about a yard distant, droop, as if from over a wall, large branches of vine or ivy 
