On the three first high steps of the branch of lava which runs to Tre
Case, I met engineer Pasquale Acunzo, a technical engineer. He has
been at his place untiringly, from the first moment of the danger,
directing the work of dikes when the lava was coming down, and now he
directs the construction of the street which must unite Boscotrecase
to its nearest centers. All our communications with Torre Annunziata
and Tre Case are cut off; it is the death of the country. The only road
that remains open to us, is the long and rough one to Scafati. Engineer
Acunzo accompanies us up the steep way, on the lava. M. Luigi Casella,
worthy mayor of Boscotrecase, joins us. He has been one of the bravest
and busiest in this sad fight, and has given himself entirely to the
saving of his country, uncaring of himself, of his goods, of his houses
which he has lost, all buried under the lava. The front part of the
lava is getting higher and higher. From its brief starting point, it
touches already the first floor of a house. We walk near the balconies,
with their banisters split, all bent outside as if a gigantic hand
had twisted them. Working men belonging to the Genio Civile, are
working hard to carry away all that can be saved, to demolish what is
in danger, and to prop up the rest. Gushes of suffocating smoke, come
out from the cracks. Here also the silent work of fire has begun. All
around the temperature is very high: it feels as if one was near the
mouth of an oven.
All at once, here we are on the large spreaded lavas, opening wide
and free as far as the skirts of the mountain. It is a sea, rough and
upset, a race of points, pics, crests, a chain of small hills as far
as the eye can reach. The sun snatches from that sea reflections of
bronze which become more and more opaque with the drawing back of the
wave up the mountain.
Further it blends itself in a grayish and uniform stratus. Here and
there dense smoke comes out from the cracks it is like the burning of
copious incense to an unknown God, a God of terror and destruction. Now
and then small houses are seen. Here is a half tumbled down palace,
the panes of the windows are all pierced with holes it is the home of
M. Bifulco. Here is a part of a ruined wall, it is the little church
that Bernardo Tanucci has built in remembrance of another eruption.
And other houses, and other ruins, and everything buried under the
great infinite sea, scattered everything. But as a contrast, if you
look down, the slope at the left, there beyond the stretch of green
orchards, behind the white girdles of the houses, far, away, at the end
there is the sea ample and serene, bathed in a soft, sapphire colour
just as in an April day. The sea shining as a hope, in front of the
ruins of a country, which has no other confort but to hope.