illustrating the story of Meleager and Atalanta. Other frescos adorn
its walls, representing the judgment of Paris, Mercury presenting
a purse to Ceres, and a young satyr frightening a bacchante with a
serpent. Its peristylium, sixty by seventy-three feet, is the finest
yet found in Pompeii. The columns of the peristylium are covered with
yellow stucco and its chambers are floored with mosaic. A colonnade
rises on three sides of the dining-room, and one of twenty-four
columns, red below and white above, supports the portico. A garden to
the left of the atrium and in front of the portico is adorned by a
pretty fountain. An exquisite bronze statuette of a dancing faun, now
in the Naples museum, gave its present title to the most beautiful and
also one of the largest houses in Pompeii. The discovery of this house
was first made in 1830, in the presence of a son of the poet Goethe. A
small pedestal, on which the statuette of the faun stood, is still seen
in the marble-lined impluvium. In the mosaic floor of one of the rooms
near by three doves are represented drawing a string of pearls from a
casket. Mosaics in the dining-room represented Acratus (companion of
Bacchus) riding on a lion, a cat devouring a partridge, and a group
of crustaceans and fishes. The salutation, "_Have_," (welcome) is
wrought with colored marble in the pavement of the vestibule before the
main entrance. The walls are covered with stucco made of cement, in
imitation of colored marble.
The atrium, thirty-five by thirty-eight feet, is finished in the Tuscan
style, but the twenty-eight columns surrounding the peristylium are
Ionic. In the rear of the mansion opens a garden, one hundred and
five by one hundred and fifteen feet, enclosed with a peristyle of
fifty-six Doric columns. Various articles in gold, silver, bronze, and
terra-cotta were found in this house, and also some skeletons, one
of which was that of a woman with a gold ring on her finger engraved
with the name Cassia. But the most important discovery of all made in
the House of the Faun was that of the magnificent mosaic of Alexander
in the battle of Issus. "This work, which is almost the only ancient
historical composition in existence, represents the battle at the
moment when Alexander, whose helmet has fallen from his head, charges
Darius with his cavalry and transfixes the general of the Persians,
who has fallen from his wounded horse. The chariot of the Persian
monarch is prepared for retreat, whilst in the foreground a Persian of
rank, in order to insure the more speedy escape of the king, who is
absorbed in thought at the sight of his expiring general, offers him
his horse."--Baedeker.
Such are some of the principal mansions of Pompeii and the objects
found in them. All of the most precious works of art which were or
could be detached, including many exquisite little mural frescos,
have been removed and deposited in the museum at Naples. The ruins
and the museum explain each other, and taken together furnish the
most complete and vivid illustration of ancient life in the world. No
books, no pictures, can tell us so clearly and comprehensively how the
people of that day and country lived as the remains of this buried
city. Its dwellings, shops, streets, prisons, temples, theatres, and
tombs disclose with amazing fulness and accuracy the pursuits, habits,
follies, vices, and even the thoughts of its inhabitants, just as they
were living and moving when caught, overwhelmed, and forever stilled
in the full tide of their existence. Well-curbs worn by the sliding
rope, stepping-stones hollowed by the march of eager multitudes,
pavements scarred by the stamp of horses' hoofs, advertisements
painted on public walls, shops and magazines containing the symbols
and utensils of trade, fountains where the crystal torrent might have
hushed but an hour ago its rippling voice, temples whose altars bear
yet the marks of sacrificial fires, frescos whose color and outline
are bright and delicate in spite of calamity and time, mosaic floors
smooth and shining as if polished only yesterday by the dance of dainty
feet,--these and a thousand more traces of the life of that ancient
time help the imagination to re-people and restore the ruined city as
it was in the day of its pride and splendor.
An inspection of the ruins of Pompeii deepens upon the mind its
impressions of the sublimity and terror of Vesuvius. Physically
speaking, the volcano is but a monstrous heap of ashes, stones, and
scoriæ, hollow, or partially so, in the centre, and streaked with
black, solidified lava-currents on the outside. From the crater,
whirling volumes of steam and smoke constantly issue, each rotary gush
representing an interior explosion, usually heard only on the summit.
In the varying states of the atmosphere this monstrous volume of vapor
rises in columnar form for thousands of feet, and is then borne far to
seaward, or landward, by the upper currents of the air; or it falls in
a dense, sulphurous, shapeless cloud, which envelops and conceals the
upper part of the mountain. In the latter condition of things I made my
first ascent; in the former my second. On the first occasion we went up
from Portici and down to Pompeii; on the second, the route was reversed.
From Pompeii the summit may be made--on horseback as far as the foot of
the cone--in about three hours. The railway on the Portici side ascends
to the outside rim of the crater, within which, separated by fissured
slabs of lava, which a yard below the surface yet glow with living
fire, the main chimney or flue of the volcano rises some hundreds of
feet higher. On the eastern side, below the rim, a lava stream of
considerable magnitude had burst forth at the time of my visit, and was
issuing with a fierce hissing sound. Its course could be traced down
the slopes of the mountain for the distance of a mile. Its movement,
at first quite rapid, was soon checked by the cooling effect of the
atmosphere. The operations of the crater at this time were extremely
interesting. Near the base of the finial cone a small secondary
volcanic funnel had recently been formed, which sometimes almost
silenced with its screeching and blubber the thunderous rumbling within
the main chimney. Neither of the active craters could be approached
with safety, but they made no objections to being looked at, and so,
dismissing my guide, I remained about two hours on the summit, watching
their antics. Sometimes the smaller crater, or safety-valve, as it
seemed to be, would work itself up to a perfect frenzy of hysterical
hissing and shrieking, as though all the misery of a hundred colicky
locomotives were venting itself in one prolonged scream. During such
spells the red liquid lava would bubble over the rim for a time, like
the boiling of an overfilled pot; then suddenly some explosive interior
force would throw it into the air in a sheaf of beautiful red spray,
rising and descending in graceful parabolas all around the cone. After
this performance, the little fellow would subside and keep tolerably
quiet for ten minutes or so, when it would be seized with another
paroxysm.
The larger crater, though also intermittent, was more progressive
and less fidgety in its action. Its behavior had the dignified air
of regular business, while the safety-valve demeaned itself more as
a transient upstart, impatient of attracting popular attention. The
masses of steam and smoke issuing from the main orifice were somewhat
irregular, both in quantity and velocity, their increase in both
respects being always accompanied by louder and more rapid interior
explosions. At the moments of greatest activity showers of stones
and lumps of red lava were hurled into the air to heights varying
from three hundred to one thousand feet, and, descending, rolled
rattling and smoking down the yellow, sulphurous sides of the cone.
The spectacle was terrifically sublime at times, particularly when the
safety-valve chimed in with its screaming accompaniment, and flung
aloft its _jet-d'eau_-like pyrotechnics. The missiles projected from
the main crater soared at an angle of about fifty degrees, and almost
uniformly in the same direction, so that they fell on territory of
which the spectator, looking on from the opposite point of the compass,
was quite willing to accord monopoly of possession, with a liberal
margin for unadjusted boundary.
As sunset approached, and the shades of evening were beginning to add
new touches of grandeur to the sublime spectacle, I took leave of
it reluctantly, and, with Brobdingnagian strides down the volcanic
ash-heap, descended in not more than seven minutes a space which it had
once cost me a weary half-hour and the help of two guides to climb.
Three hours later the red currents of lava could be seen from my window
in Naples, glittering far away in the darkness, and streaking the black
sides of the volcano like descending streams of molten gold.
MOUNT ETNA IN ERUPTION.
BAYARD TAYLOR.
[It is not Etna in one of its gigantic throes of eruption that
we propose to describe. The traveller whose story of the mountain
we append was not fortunate enough to witness such a spectacle.
But he saw it in a minor phase of activity, and describes the
vision so well that his account is well worth repeating. It was
on his way from Malta to Sicily that he first caught sight of
the volcano, ninety miles away, rising in solitary state behind
the nearer mountains. He continued his course till abreast of
Syracuse, "with Etna as distant as ever."]
The fourth morning dawned, and--great Neptune be praised!--we were
actually within the Gulf of Catania. Etna loomed up in all his sublime
bulk, unobscured by cloud or mist, while a slender jet of smoke, rising
from his crater, was slowly curling its wreaths in the clear air, as
if happy to receive the first beam of the sun. The towers of Syracuse,
which had mocked us all the preceding day, were no longer visible; the
land-locked little port of Augusta lay behind us; and, as the wind
continued favorable, ere long we saw a faint white mark at the foot of
the mountain. This was Catania.
The shores of the bay were enlivened with orange-groves and the gleam
of the villages, while here and there a single palm dreamed of its
brothers across the sea. Etna, of course, had the monarch's place in
the landscape, but even his large, magnificent outlines could not usurp
all my feelings. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland
had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they
leaned towards each other there was a promise of the flowery meadows of
Enna....
Catania presented a lovely picture as we drew near its harbor. Planted
at the very foot of Etna, it has a background such as neither Naples
nor Genoa can boast. The hills next the sea are covered with gardens
and orchards, sprinkled with little villages and the country-places
of the nobles,--a rich, cultured landscape, which gradually merges
into the forests of oak and chestnut that girdle the waist of the
great volcano. But all the wealth of southern vegetation cannot hide
the footsteps of that Ruin, which from time to time visits the soil.
Half-way up the mountain-side is dotted with cones of ashes and
cinders, some covered with the scanty shrubbery which centuries have
called forth, some barren and recent; while two dark, winding streams
of sterile lava descend to the very shore, where they stand congealed
in ragged needles and pyramids. Part of one of these black floods has
swept the town, and, tumbling into the sea, walls one side of the port.
[What shall we say of Catania? It has not dwelt at the foot of
Mount Etna with impunity, but has been more than once destroyed.
During the week of Mr. Taylor's visit the centennial festival of
St. Agatha, the miracles of whose martyrdom had here their scene,
took place. This saint still performs miracles, "and her power
is equally efficacious in preventing earthquakes and eruptions
of Mount Etna." The festival was brilliant in illuminations and
pyrotechnic displays.]
Truly, except the illumination of the Golden Horn on the Night of
Predestination, I have seen nothing equal to the spectacle presented by
Catania during the past three nights. The city, which has been built
up from her ruins more stately than ever, was in a blaze of light,
all her domes, towers, and the long lines of her beautiful palaces
revealed in the varying red and golden flames of a hundred thousand
lamps and torches. Pyramids of fire, transparencies, and illuminated
triumphal arches filled the four principal streets, and the fountain
in the cathedral square gleamed like a jet of molten silver, spinning
up from one of the pores of Etna. At ten o'clock a gorgeous display of
fireworks closed the day's festivities, but the lamps remained burning
nearly all night.
On the second night the grand Procession of the Veil took place. I
witnessed the imposing spectacle from the balcony of Prince Gessina's
palace. Long lines of waxen torches led the way, followed by a military
band, and then a company of the highest prelates in their most
brilliant costumes, surrounding the bishop, who walked under a canopy
of silk and gold, bearing the miraculous veil of St. Agatha. I was
blessed with a distant view of it, but could see no traces of the rosy
hue left upon it by the flames of the saint's martyrdom....
To-night Signor Scava, the American vice-consul, took me to the palace
of Prince Biscari, overlooking the harbor, in order to behold the
grand display of fireworks from the end of the mole. The showers of
rockets and colored stars, and the temples of blue and silver fire,
were repeated in the dark, quiet bosom of the sea, producing the most
dazzling and startling effects....
Among the antiquities of Catania which I have visited are the
Amphitheatre, capable of holding fifteen thousand persons, the old
Greek Theatre, in which Alcibiades made his noted harangue to the
Catanians, the Odeon, and the ancient baths. The theatre, which is
in tolerable preservation, is built of lava, like many of the modern
edifices in the city. The baths proved to me, what I had supposed, that
the Oriental bath of the present day is identical with that of the
ancients. Why so admirable an institution has never been introduced
into Europe is more than I can tell. From the pavement of these baths,
which is nearly twenty feet below the surface of the earth, the lava of
later eruptions has burst up, in places, in hard black jets. The most
wonderful token of that flood which whelmed Catania two hundred years
ago is to be seen at the grand Benedictine convent of San Nicola, in
the upper part of the city. Here the stream of lava divides itself just
before the convent, and flows past on both sides, leaving the buildings
and garden untouched. The marble courts, the fountains, the splendid
galleries, and the gardens of richest Southern bloom and fragrance
stand like an epicurean island in the midst of the terrible stony
waves, whose edges bristle with the thorny aloe and cactus....
The noises of the festival had not ceased when I closed my eyes at
midnight. I slept soundly through the night, but was awakened before
sunrise by my Sicilian landlord. "Oh, Excellenza! have you heard the
Mountain? He is going to break out again; may the holy St. Agatha
protect us!"
It is rather ill-timed on the part of the Mountain, was my involuntary
first thought, that he should choose for a new eruption precisely the
centennial festival of the only saint who is supposed to have any power
over him. It shows a disregard of female influence not at all suited
to the present day, and I scarcely believe that he seriously means it.
Next comes along the jabbering landlady: "I don't like his looks. It
was just so the last time. Come, Excellenza, you can see him from the
back terrace."
The sun was not yet risen, but the east was bright with his coming, and
there was not a cloud in the sky. All the features of Etna were sharply
sculptured in the clear air. From the topmost cone a thick stream of
white smoke was slowly puffed out at short intervals, and rolled lazily
down the eastern side. It had a heavy, languid character, and I should
have thought nothing of the appearance but for the alarm of my hosts.
It was like the slow fire of earth's incense burning on that grand
mountain altar.
I hurried off to the post-office to await the arrival of the diligence
from Palermo. The office is in the Strada Etnea, the main street of
Catania, which runs straight through the city from the sea to the base
of the mountain whose peak closes the long vista. The diligence was an
hour later than usual, and I passed the time in watching the smoke,
which continued to increase in volume, and was mingled, from time to
time, with jets of inky blackness. The postilion said he had seen fires
and heard loud noises during the night. According to his account, the
disturbances commenced about midnight.
At last we rolled out of Catania. There were in the diligence, besides
myself, two men and a woman, Sicilians of the secondary class. The road
followed the shore, over rugged tracts of lava, the different epochs of
which could be distinctly traced in the character of their vegetation.
The last great flow (of 1679) stood piled in long ridges of terrible
sterility, barely allowing the aloe and cactus to take root in the
hollows between. The older deposits were sufficiently decomposed to
nourish the olive and vine, but even here the orchards were studded
with pyramids of the harder fragments, which are laboriously collected
by the husbandmen. In the few favored spots which have been untouched
for so many ages that a tolerable depth of soil has accumulated, the
vegetation has all the richness and brilliancy of tropical lands.
The palm, orange, and pomegranate thrive luxuriantly, and the vines
almost break under their heavy clusters. The villages are frequent and
well-built, and the hills are studded, far and near, with the villas
of rich proprietors, mostly buildings of one story, with verandas
extending their whole length. Looking up towards Etna, whose base the
road encircles, the views are gloriously rich and beautiful. On the
other hand is the blue Mediterranean and the irregular outline of the
shore, here and there sending forth promontories of lava, cooled by the
waves into the most fantastic forms.
We had not proceeded far before a new sign called my attention to
the mountain. Not only was there a perceptible jar or vibration in
the earth, but a dull, groaning sound, like the muttering of distant
thunder, began to be heard. The smoke increased in volume, and, as we
advanced farther to the eastward, and much nearer to the great cone,
I perceived that it consisted of two jets issuing from different
mouths. A broad stream of very dense white smoke still flowed over the
lip of the topmost crater and down the eastern side. As its breadth
did not vary, and the edges were distinctly defined, it was no doubt
the sulphureous vapor rising from a river of molten lava. Perhaps a
thousand yards below a much stronger column of mingled black and white
smoke gushed up in regular beats or pants from a depression in the
mountain-side, between two small extinct cones. All this part of Etna
was scarred with deep chasms, and in the bottoms of those nearest the
opening I could see the red gleam of fire. The air was perfectly still,
and as yet there was no cloud in the sky.
When we stopped to change horses at the town of Aci Reale, I first felt
the violence of the tremor and the awful sternness of the sound. The
smoke by this time seemed to be gathering on the side towards Catania,
and hung in a dark mass about half-way down the mountain. Groups of the
villagers were gathered in the streets which looked upward to Etna and
discussing the chances of an eruption. "Ah," said an old peasant, "the
Mountain knows how to make himself respected. When he talks, everybody
listens." The sound was the most awful that ever met my ears. It was a
hard, painful moan, now and then fluttering like a suppressed sob, and
had, at the same time, an expression of threatening and of agony. It
did not come from Etna alone. It had no fixed location; it pervaded
all space. It was in the air, in the depths of the sea, in the earth
under my feet, everywhere, in fact; and as it continued to increase in
violence I experienced a sensation of positive pain. The people looked
anxious and alarmed, although they said it was a good thing for all
Sicily; the last year they had been in constant fear from earthquakes,
and an eruption invariably left the earth quiet for several years. It
is true that during the past year parts of Sicily and Calabria have
been visited with severe shocks, occasioning much damage to property.
A merchant of this city [Messina] informed me yesterday that his whole
family had slept for two months in the vaults of his warehouse, fearing
that their residence might be shaken down in the night.
As we rode along from Aci Reale to Taormina, all the rattling of the
diligence over the rough road could not drown the awful noise. There
was a strong smell of sulphur in the air, and the thick pants of smoke
from the lower crater continued to increase in strength. The sun was
fierce and hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a
dazzling whiteness. A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the
diligence, talking with the postilion. He had been up to the mountain,
and was taking his report to the governor of the district.
The heat of the day and the continued tremor of the air lulled me
into a sort of doze, when I was suddenly aroused by a cry from the
soldier and the stopping of the diligence. At the same time there was
a terrific peal of sound, followed by a jar that must have shaken the
whole island. We looked up to Etna, which was fortunately in full
view before us. An immense mass of snow-white smoke had burst up from
the crater, and was rising perpendicularly into the air, the rounded
volumes rapidly whirling one over the other, yet urged with such
impetus that they only rolled outward after they had ascended to an
immense height. It might have been one minute or five, for I was so
entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I lost the sense of time,
but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent were the effects of
the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on the summit of the
mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and shaped precisely
like the Italian pine-tree.
Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree. Its trunk of
columned smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the
other, in shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile
before it sent out its cloudy boughs. Then parting into a thousand
streams, each of which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke,
rolling and waving in the air, it stood in intense relief against the
dark blue of the sky. Its rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly
white on one side, while, in the shadowy depths of the branches, there
was a constant play of brown, yellow, and crimson tints, revealing
the central shaft of fire. It was like the tree celebrated in the
Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother of Harold Hardrada,--that
tree whose roots pierced through the earth, whose trunk was of the
color of blood, and whose branches filled the uttermost corners of the
heavens.
The outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were
now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air,
and earth, and sea. And now, from the base of the tree, three white
streams slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls
of which played the flickering glow of the burning lava. The column of
smoke and flame was still hurled upward, and the tree, after standing
about ten minutes,--a new and awful revelation of the active forces of
nature,--gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved
by a light wind (the first that disturbed the dead calm of the day),
bent over to the eastward.
We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last arched over the
strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the distant
Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way, the
sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle
of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn
between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and
showers of white ashes fell from time to time. We were distant about
twelve miles, in a straight line, from the crater, but the air was so
clear, even under the shadow of the smoke, that I could distinctly
trace the downward movement of the rivers of lava.