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First of all I made a light meal for one fourth of my money, and, having been informed that I had to follow the Salerno road, I went towards Portici where I arrived in an hour and a half. I already felt rather fatigued; my legs, if not my head, took me to an inn, where I ordered a room and some supper.

But if he has not got it, I will tell him myself, when we meet in Salzburg, what ought to have been in it. Yesterday we wore our new clothes; we were as handsome as angels. My kind regards to Nandl; she must not fail to pray diligently for me. Jomelli's opera is to be given on the 30th. We saw the king and queen at mass in the court chapel at Portici, and we also saw Vesuvius.

From a niche in the temple was taken a statue of marble: a woman pressing her lips with her forefinger. Within the area is a well, where the priest threw the ashes of the sacrifices. We saw in the Museum at Portici some lovely arabesque paintings, cut from the walls of the cloister. The foliage which ran round the whole sweep of the cloister itself is in the finest taste.

The reflection that this theatre had held its ten thousand spectators, and that it then lay, with the city of which it was an ornament, so horribly engulphed, gave rise to feelings in awful contrast to those excited by the elysium of Portici almost immediately above. About seven miles further along the base of the mountain, lies the long lost city of Pompeii.

The letters of Pliny the Younger say that the eruption of Vesuvius which caused the destruction of Portici lasted five days, and we know that the houses are covered with a uniformly distributed bed of pumice-stone some thirteen feet thick, and of cinders about three feet thick.

First of all I made a light meal for one fourth of my money, and, having been informed that I had to follow the Salerno road, I went towards Portici where I arrived in an hour and a half. I already felt rather fatigued; my legs, if not my head, took me to an inn, where I ordered a room and some supper.

You must agree that the quality is injured, because it is no longer susceptible of further augmentation." "You knew that to be the case; the point is its equality with the mercury I sold in Portici. But we shall have to go to law, and you will lose. I am sorry the secret should become public.

Along the base of the volcano lie the towns of Portici, Annunziata, and Torre del Greco, everything glittering in the light of the rising sun. The eyes cannot rest upon a spot which has not its classic association, turn which way we will. In the distance eastward is seen Castellamare and Sorrento on the right curve of the crescent-shaped shore, while on the left lie Solfatara and Pozzuoli.

Opposite, but very far off across the sea, shone the tiny flames of the houses of Portici, of Torre del Greco, of Torre Annunziata, of Castellamare. Against the gathering darkness Vesuvius belched slowly soft clouds of rose-colored vapor, which went up like a menace into the dim vault of the sky. The sea was without waves.

The effect of this fact is to stimulate the imagination of the visitor to that degree that nothing short of the instant destruction of Portici and the excavation of all Herculaneum will satisfy him.