Here we are on the road of the Croce, going step by step, with the
slowness of death, sinking deep in the ashes, and looking in vain for
a safer path. We go over it with a sense of immense oppression, not
knowing when or whether we will arrive, not knowing if our strength
will last until we get there. We meet a cart coming down. The poor
horse is already tired. It would take at least three horses to drag a
carriage through these roads now made of ashes and stones. The cart
driver tells us about the many people who have perished at Ottaiano
and shakes his head when we ask him the number. It is large, many
people were killed while praying in the Oratorio of San Giuseppe!
Crushed under the weight of our sorrow, we resume our walk on the road
of the Croce, where so few people have passed before. Only a prince of
Casa Savoia, only a daughter of the house of France and the soldiers
of Italy, the brave soldiers the good soldiers, have come this way.
What time is it when we reach Ottaiano? Who knows? Who knows anything
more about the hour, about time, about life, in these last four days?
We feel as if we had been walking for centuries in this hard, rough,
horrible street: we feel as if we had to stop at every step and rest;
at last, we reach the new Pompei, Ottaiano.
An untold horror of devastation is around us. The most beautiful as
well as the poorest houses have tumbled down under the weight of the
cinders and stones, and everywhere you see a precipice of bricks,
beams, and rocks: it is the death-like solitude of the places where
death has passed. A gentleman from Ottaiano, who has just returned
here to give some help, tells us all about the catastrophe. It seems
that the cinders have begun to fall thickly during the second night
from Saturday to Sunday, and it was then that the people, getting
alarmed, have left their houses, the exodus having started about dawn.
But in the following morning, the stones have come down thicker and
larger, rebounding and accumulating, and, at the remembrance of the
horrible scene, and the flight from Ottaiano, poor M. Cola's voice
trembles. He however, with the help of his brothers, managed to save
his mother, carrying her in his arms to Sarno where she is now, he
told us, perfectly safe. It seems that in a few minutes all the panes
of the windows were broken, people running away with chairs and tables
on their heads, to protect themselves from the rocks, others with
folded covers and pillows, shielding their heads, and shoulders. And
while they fled on every side, falling down in their haste, wounding
their hands and knees under the infernal shower of hissing rocks, the
houses at Ottaiano, were tumbling down. Poor baroness Scudieri, while
running away, must have heard the crash of her palace, and of the whole
manufacture Scudieri falling in ruins, while in the same moment on the
other side Ateneo Chierchia, and the house belonging to the brothers
Cola, just then remoderned, were falling in a heap. What struck us
as strange was how, in the midst of so great a ruination, the grand
palace of Prince Ottaiano remained untouched, standing alone and erect
as if in mute contemplation of this immense destruction.
To Nola, Sarno, Castellamare, Marigliano, people fled from Ottaiano,
and the poorest, finding no shelter, ran about the fields, and over
the whole country, as far as possible from the place of the disaster.
There must be dead people under these stones. In a house seven persons
have been buried, a whole family, and through the door we see the half
bust of a man, dead, a poor wretch who must have tried to open it,
and escape, just as many did in the catastrophe of Pompei! Beautiful
Ottaiano, the finest place in the Vesuvian comunes is, sadly to say,
destroyed for four fifth, and what remains will have to be demolished,
being quite in a dangerous condition. Poor abandoned, isolated country,
helped by nobody, left to its fate for a whole day and a half. But
for the duke of Aosta, who went there with his troops, it would have
remained in this condition with its dead and wounded for eight days
longer. And yet people are returning here and they even dare to go over
the road of the Croce. Here comes a family of peasants on an old broken
down char-à banc. The poor mother has a child clasped in her arms,
she is as pale as death! The father holds another child, four larger
ones are laying on some straw, a real human pile, sad and deserted. We
tell them not to return to Ottaiano, for their house will surely fall
on their heads. But they protest, and declare that they will sleep in
the open air, that they want to return among the ruins. The woman is
terribly pale, and the children are terrorised. Here is a tall thin old
man, coming on foot. Ah! how he weeps, how he weeps! How sad it is to
see an old man weeping. We tell him not to venture in Ottaiano, we beg
him not to go, and he excitedly exclaims: I want to see, I want to see
whether anything has remained of our country, and, he goes in almost
stumbling, disappearing into the new Pompei.