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As you know, it is a Roman town buried under the lava and ashes of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. I walked about the streets of the town and saw the houses, the temples, the theatre, the squares.... I saw and marvelled at the faculty of the Romans for combining simplicity with convenience and beauty. After viewing Pompeii, I lunched at a restaurant and then decided to go to Vesuvius.
Padre Torre, a great observer of Vesuvius, says they went up above a thousand feet. The lava ceased on the 18th of October, but at 8 A. M. on the 19th it rushed out at a different place, after volleys of stones had been thrown to an immense height, and the huge traditional pine-tree of smoke reappeared.
The group of relatively insignificant peaks in the center of the crater floor of Tycho is far more massive than the entire mountain that we call Vesuvius. The largest known volcanic crater on the earth, Aso San, in Japan, has a diameter of seven miles; it would take sixty craters like Aso San to equal Tycho in area!
The Vesuvius Company had invested large sums in wharves and plantations along the Anchurian coast, their agents had erected fine homes in the towns where they had their headquarters, and heretofore had worked with the republic in good-will and with advantage to both. It would lose an immense sum if compelled to move out.
He seized the unfortunate Crackenfudge, and as, with red and dripping lips, he gave vent to the furious eruptions of his fiery spirit, like a living Vesuvius for we know of no other comparison so appropriate he kicked and cuffed the wretched and unlucky intelligencer, until he fairly threw him out at the hall-door, which he himself shut after him.
Yet Vesuvius belches forth its liquid fire and in one day of stark terror the great city which was full of men is become mute and desolate. The proud liner scrapes along the surface of the frozen berg and crumples like a ship of cards.
My friend left me alone. I sat by the window, watching the waving of the tasselled branches of the acacia, and the purple fiery vapor that arose from the overflowing Vesuvius; and I thought of Adelaide Malanotte, and wondered at the strange, fatal necessity attendant on genius, its spiritual labor and pain.
The costumes of men, women and children; the articles of clothing and of food ready for sale; the little knots of loiterers or gossips; the citizens intent on reading the municipal notices that are herein portrayed, all combine to present us with an authentic picture of Pompeian and therefore of Roman civic life. “There is nothing new under the sun,” grumbled the Preacher many centuries before the city under Vesuvius had reached its zenith of civilization, and it must be confessed that the general impression conveyed after studying the contemporary pictures of antique life does not differ very widely from that which we obtain by observing present Italian conditions.
By far the best-known volcanic cone is that of Vesuvius, which has been subjected to tolerably complete record for about twenty-four hundred years. About 500 B.C. the Greeks, who were ever on the search for places where they might advantageously plant colonies, settled on the island of Ischia, which forms the western of what is now termed the Bay of Naples.
Probably Caius was dressed just like this, and carried such a stick when he played in his father's courtyard. Nowadays men know from history what may happen when Vesuvius wakes. But in 79 A.D., when Pompeii was buried, the mountain had slept for hundreds of years, and no man knew that an eruption might bury a city. The roofs are all gone and all the partitions inside the houses show.
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