1854.] 



VESUVIUS AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 



239 



buttress-like dykes of subsequent and apparently harder lava 

 jutting out from the semi -circular escarpment of this, the original 

 gigantic crater of the volcano of the pre-historic times; and after 

 satisfying your curiosity as well as the time will admit, you return 

 and begin the ascent of the cone. 



The place chosen for this exploit is a part built up, so to speak, 

 ■with closely -packed fragments of lava and slag, between the inter- 

 stices aud among the prominences of which you insert your feet, 

 to the certain disruption of only moderately strong shoes. The 

 whole inclination of Vesuvius, were it uniform from Resina to the 

 lip of the crater, would be only about thirteen degrees. Up* to 

 the base of the cone it is still less; but the cone itself is inclined 

 at an angle of forty-three degrees. The perpendicular height of 

 the cone is about 1000 feet; so that it can easily be conceived 

 that the physical labour of ascending it — to a person not accus- 

 tomed to climb — is for the time extremely painful. It requires, 

 indeed, many " corragios " from the guide, and some assistance 

 from a looped strap which he throws over his shoulder for you to 

 lay hold of, to enable you to persevere. 



While toiling thus sorely up this steep, I began to be convinced 

 that the good Franks of yore really did mean by their word 

 " travail " what some etymologists have asserted. To get " trans 

 vallum" — beyond the wall — to scale the precipitous flank of some 

 old Roman camp, was doubtless to their warriors some such task 

 as this — a difficulty memorable enough, certainly, to be embodied 

 in a term. 



At length, after numerous rests, and after a lapse of perhaps an 

 hour and a half, you find yourself on the comparatively T level plat- 

 form which leads to the lip of the great crater. The desire accom- 

 plished is found to be truly sweet on such an occasion, and the 

 propensity to be noisily elated is quite overpowering. A strong 

 wind blowing in our direction, sweeping down over us a huge 

 eolumn of vapour, which completely obstructs the vision, obliges 

 us several times still to halt in our ascent of the final gently inclined 

 plane. 



At last we are on the brink of the great crater, and we find 

 ourselves looking down into a gigantic and tolerably sooty-looking 

 flue, up which from unknown mysterious depths are rolling volumes 

 of what in the distance seems smoke, but which is, in fact, steam 

 - — steam earrying up with it a variety of choking gases. The 

 whole breathing apparatus becomes immediately painfully affected, 

 and we are reminded of the sensation suddenly experienced when 

 one passes the nostrils over the edge of some great vat where fer- 

 mentation is going on. The reverberation of a shout directed by 

 the guide or yourself down into the undefined abyss is sufficiently 

 awe-inspiring. Its effect can in some degree be conceived by 

 imagining how a shout would sound when directed into a hollow 

 cask one thousand feet in diameter. 



The view obtained in every direction from this position is in the 

 highest degree interesting and exciting. The Appenines form the 

 background of the picture, a congeries of secondary and tertiary 

 formations, exhibiting in their retiring ranges phase after phase of 

 the finest aerial colouring. On one side you look down upon a 

 city, pre-eminently of the living, ever on the stir and outwardly 

 joyous — the syren-city, a sight of which its inhabitants fondly say 

 might reconcile a man to the relinquishment of life. On another 

 side, in solemn and instructive contrast, you see cities of the dead 

 — -historic fossil beds — mines not yet exhausted by the student and 

 philosopher. Around you, on the left and right, are Capri, Ischia, 

 Procida, Miseno, Baiaa, names summoning up images of beauty 

 and long trains of shadowy forms and events. Yonder is Posilipo, 

 the " grief-dispelling," the favourite haunt of the poet who, before 

 the Christian era, sang the praises of this region, and whose tomb 



now consecrates that height. Before you, far and wide, lies the 

 tideless sea, a household word throughout the world, whose name 

 recalls the ideas with which the old cosmographers vainly tried to 

 satisfy inquiring minds — whose serene surface, stretching to the 

 distant south and west, still now as of yore reflects and sets off to 

 best advantage the never tiring, because sublime pageantry at- 

 tendant on the demise of each successive day. 



After traversing a portion of the rim of the great crater, — 

 its whole circumference is 5624 feet, — holding firmly the arm 

 of the experienced guide, you begin to clamber obliquely 

 down into the interior of the orifice. Your feet sink deep 

 in black pulverized lava or sand. You observe underneath 

 the surface everywhere beautiful primrose-coloured sulphur, per- 

 petually deposited here, I am informed, from the constantly ascend- 

 ing hydro-sulphuric acid gas. You observe the stratification of 

 the successive accumulations on the cone." Everything is sensibly 

 hot to the touch. At the direction of your conductor, you thrust 

 your hand into various holes and crevices, and you are fain to draw 

 it out again as quickly as possible — the heat either remaining from 

 the eruption of 1S50, or maintained by the continual ascent of hot 

 vapour from below. 



After descending some yards, what with the increasing gloom, 

 the oppressive heat, the obscurity of the undefined depth on the 

 left, the boisterous rush of air every now and then from above, 

 blinding and choking you with steam, the adventure seems — to a 

 novice at least — to be sufficiently beset with terrors ; and one is 

 not sorry when it is at last determined to re-ascend without actu- 

 ally setting foot on the floor of the crater, one hundred and fifty 

 feet below. 



The place chosen for the descent of the cone is wholly diverse 

 from that just now described in my account of its ascent. Con- 

 ceive one of those great earth-works which in so many directions 

 are now advancing across our Canadian valleys for railway pur- 

 poses. Imagine the perpendicular height of the part where the 

 labourers are shooting down load after load of loose soil to be one 

 thousand feet, and the inclination of the slope to be precisely the 

 angle at which the material will remain at rest : — you have then 

 an idea of the part of the cone where tourists go down from the 

 summit of Vesuvius. This side is of course selected from its being 

 composed, not of closely-packed masses of slag and lava, but of 

 pulverized volcanic matter. 



Linking yourself firmly to your guides' arm, you plunge fear- 

 lessly off. You take strides which seem miraculous. The mate- 

 rial in which you plant your heels goes down along with you and 

 after you. You have only to take care that nothing arrests the 

 action of your feet; — any obstruction might send you centrifugally 

 forwards. Everything being in your favour, you are of course at 

 the bottom in an incredibly short space of time. I remarked just 

 now on the never-to-be-forgotten painful exhaustion produced in 

 the ascent of this cone: its descent is equally memorable for the 

 exhilarating and quickening effect which it has on personages even 

 of the gravest carriage. 



At the foot of the cone the patient ponies are waiting. After 

 satisfying a number of noisy applicants who claim to have ren- 

 dered you service, you mount, and, accompanied by men carrying 

 torches — for it is now dark night — you amble gently down to 

 Resina. From thence you drive into Naples. Your mind through- 

 out the day has been receiving impressions which are to endure 

 for life, and it has become in an extraordinary degree excited. You 

 feel and welcome the calming influence of the quiet stars that bum 

 above you, and which recall the kindred splendours of your own 

 far-distant skies. 



