VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION 69 



pended above the mountain and making it look by com- 

 parison like a mole-hill. Showers of fine ashes, as in the 

 days of Pompeii, fell thickly around, accumulating to the 

 depth of an inch in a few hours even at my house in 

 Pausilippo, nine miles distant across the bay. I was 

 recovering at the time from an attack of typhoid fever, 

 and lay in bed, listening to the deep humming sound and 

 wondering at the darkness until my doctor came and told 

 me of the eruption. I was able to get up and see from 

 the window the great cauliflower-like cloud and the vacant 

 place where the ash-cone was, but whence it had now 

 been scattered into the sky. (It has been gradually re- 

 formed by later eruptions, of which the last of any size 

 was in 1906.) I could also see steam rising like smoke 

 from a long line reaching six miles down the mountain 

 into the flat country below. It was the great lava-stream 

 which had destroyed two prosperous villages in its course. 

 After ten days I was able to get about, and drove 

 over to one of these villages and along its main street, 

 which was closely blocked at the end by what looked like 

 a railway embankment some 40 ft. high. This was the 

 side of the great lava-stream now cooled and hardened 

 on the surface. It had sharply cut the houses, on each 

 side of the street, in half without setting them on fire, so 

 that the various rooms were exposed in section — pictures 

 hanging on the walls, and even chairs and other furniture 

 remaining in place on the unbroken portion of the floor. 

 The villagers had provided ladders by which I ascended 

 the steep side of the embankment-like mass at the end of 

 the street, and there a wonderful sight revealed itself. 

 One looked out on a great river seven miles long, narrow 

 where it started from the broken-down crater, but widen- 

 ing to three miles where I stood, and wider still farther 

 on as it descended. This river, with all its waves and 

 ripples, was turned to stone, and greatly resembled a Swiss 



