While we run at all speed with the elegant automobile a kind friend has
lent us towards the other Vesuvian countries not touched by the lava,
but about which all kind of sad reports reach us, we hear on all sides
the same selfish expressions, the same striking, and wounding words.
Where are you going? Where do you wish to go? Are you mad? You cannot
go any farther up, there is lava, there are stones, lapillus, ashes!
That country is destroyed! The other side is surrounded! You are mad!
But though irritated, annoyed, offended by this superficial and
selfish talk, we go on, we advance towards Cercola, Sant'Anastasia, the
Madonna dell'Arco, following the tracks of the Royal Automobile, as the
king and queen have climbed up there before us, and have already come
back. We cannot believe that we may not reach Somma, or that Somma is
destroyed; we do not believe that one cannot get to Ottaiano by some
means at least, even if this pretty and rich little town is destroyed
as people with a half ironical, half resigned smile, tell us, unwilling
as they are to go, and give their help. Ah! sure, we poor writers of
human troubles can do but very little, but we want to see this sorrow
with our own eyes, we want to relate it that it might touch the heart
of people to heroism and pity, and we want to relate it just as it is,
just as it exists, by personally witnessing everything, as we have
always done.
On this road that goes to Somma, other people have passed an hour ago,
and we also want to go over it all, even through ashes and lapillus,
over the stones, just as we can, by carriage, on foot, any-way. As we
advance we begin to see all over the country around us, something like
a mantle of snow. Has it snowed on the fields, on the trees?
No, the Vesuvian ashes, with the rain and the dew, have already changed
into chlorate of ammonia, and all is now white and brilliant under the
pale rays of the sun. Here on the right, behind the mountain of Somma,
things have taken a dark, livid aspect. An immense cloud of ashes
and smoke is bending down over the hidden cone in the direction of
Torre Annunziata, Resina Portici, and night seems to reign there. Here
instead, all is clear, all is candidly white. Our automobile is now
going slower, it cracks between two deep sinks of ashes and lapillus.
The wheels are now beginning to sink, and at the first little houses
of Somma Vesuviana we stop, and ask the people if the king has passed.
Yes, yes, the king has reached Somma Vesuviana with his automobile,
and has insisted on continuing to Ottaiano, but the automobile having
been caught and sunk in the ashes and lapillus, it has been impossible
to advance. He has insisted on going on foot, but it would have been
at least a four hours' journey. The carabineers have tried to push,
the royal automobile with their arms, but without success. Then the
king has decided to go back. And now, in the great solitude of this
grand landscape, in the silence of things, we are really struck by the
idea that something terrible must have happened up there, and that the
disaster may come near being, what it was one day at Pompei!