THE STORY OF PLINY
“TO teach you what the cinders thrown up by a volcano can do, I am now
going to tell you a very old story, just as it was transmitted to us by
a celebrated writer of those old times. This writer is called Pliny. His
writing is in Latin, the great language of those days.
“It was in the year 79 of our era. Contemporaries of our Savior were
still living. Vesuvius was then a peaceful mountain. It was not
terminated then, as to-day, by a smoking cone, but by a table-land
slightly concave, the remains of an old filled-up crater where thin
grasses and wild vines grew. Very fertile crops covered its sides; two
populous towns, Herculaneum and Pompeii, lay stretched at its base.
“The old volcano, which seemed forever lulled, and whose last eruptions
went back to times beyond the memory of man, suddenly awakened and began
to smoke. On the 23d of August, about one o’clock in the afternoon, an
extraordinary cloud, sometimes white, sometimes black, was seen hovering
over Vesuvius. Impelled violently by some subterranean force, it first
rose straight up in the form of a tree-trunk; then, after attaining a
great height, it sank down under its own weight and spread out over a
wide area.
“Now, there was at that time at Messina, a seaport not far from
Vesuvius, an uncle of the author who has handed down these things to us.
He was called Pliny, like his nephew. He commanded the Roman fleet
stationed at this port. He was a man of great courage, never retreating
from any danger if he could gain new knowledge or render aid to others.
Surprised at the singular cloud that hovered over Vesuvius, Pliny
immediately set out with his fleet to go to the aid of the menaced coast
towns and to observe the terrible cloud from a nearer point. The people
at the foot of Vesuvius were fleeing in haste, wild with fear. He went
to the side where all were in flight and where the peril appeared the
greatest.”
“Fine!” cried Jules. “Courage comes to you when you are with those who
are not afraid. I love Pliny for hastening to the volcano to learn about
the danger. I should like to have been there.”
“Alas! my poor child, you would not have found it a picnic. Burning
cinders mixed with calcined stones were falling on the vessels; the sea,
lashed to fury, was rising from its bed; the shore, encumbered with
debris from the mountain, was becoming inaccessible. There was nothing
to do but retreat. The fleet came to land at Stabiæ, where the danger,
still distant, but all the time approaching, had already caused
consternation. In the meantime, from several points on Vesuvius great
flames burst forth, their terrifying glare rendered more frightful by
the darkness caused by the cloud of cinders. To reassure his companions
Pliny told them that these flames came from some abandoned villages
caught by the fire.”
“He told them that to give them courage,” Jules conjectured, “but he
himself well knew the truth of the matter.”
“He knew it well, he knew the danger was great; nevertheless, overcome
by fatigue, he fell into a deep sleep. Now, while he slept, the cloud
reached Stabiæ. Little by little the court leading to his apartment was
filled with cinders, so that in a short time he would not have been able
to get out. They woke him to prevent his being buried alive and to
deliberate on what was to be done. The houses, shaken by continual
shocks, seemed to be torn from their foundations; they swayed from side
to side. Many fell. It was decided to put to sea again. A shower of
stones was falling—small ones, it is true, and calcined by the fire. As
a protection from them, the men covered their heads with pillows, and
going through the most horrible darkness, hardly relieved by the light
of the torches they carried, they made their way toward the shore. There
Pliny sat on the ground a moment to rest, when violent flames,
accompanied by a strong smell of sulphur, put everybody to flight. He
rose and then instantly fell back dead. The emanations, cinders, and
smoke from the volcano had suffocated him.”
“Poor Pliny! To be stifled to death like that by the horrible mountain,
and he so courageous!” lamented Jules.
“Whilst the uncle was dying at Stabiæ, the nephew, left at Messina with
his mother, was witness of what he relates to us. ‘The night after my
uncle’s departure,’ he tells us, ‘the earth began to tremble violently.
My mother hastened in alarm to waken me. She found me getting up to go
and waken her. As the house threatened to collapse, we sat outside in
the court, not far from the sea. With the carelessness of youth—I was
then eighteen—I began to read. A friend of my uncle’s came along. Seeing
my mother and me both of us seated, and me with a book in my hand, he
blamed us for our confidence and induced us to look out for our safety.
Although it was seven o’clock in the morning, we could hardly see, the
air was so obscured. At times buildings were so shaken that their fall
was imminent at any moment. We followed the example of the rest and left
the town. We stopped some distance off in the country. The wagons that
were brought away swayed continually with the shaking of the ground.
Even with their wheels blocked with stones they could hardly be held in
place. The sea flowed back on itself: driven from the shore by the
earthquake shocks, it receded from the beach and left a multitude of
fish dry on the sand. A horrible black cloud came toward us. On its
flanks were serpentine lines of fire like immense flashes of lightning.
Soon the cloud descends, covering earth and sea. Then my mother begs me
to flee with all the speed of my youth, and not to expose myself to
imminent death by adapting my pace to hers, weighed down as she was by
years. She would die content if she knew I was out of danger.’”
“And Pliny left his old mother behind in order to get away the faster?”
queried Jules.
“No, my child, he did what you would all have done. He remained,
sustaining and encouraging her, resolved to save himself with her or
else die with her.”
“Good!” cried Jules. “The nephew was worthy of his uncle. And then what
happened?”
“Then it was frightful. Cinders began to fall; darkness descended, so
intense that they could see nothing. There was general confusion,
outcry, and moaning. Wild with terror, the people fled at random,
knocking down and treading on those who were in their way. The greater
part were convinced that that night was the last, the eternal night that
was to swallow the world. Mothers went groping for their children, lost
in the crowd or perhaps crushed under the feet of the fugitives; they
called them with doleful cries to embrace them once more and then die.
Pliny and his old mother had seated themselves apart from the crowd.
From time to time they were obliged to get up and shake off the cinders
which would soon have buried them. At last the cloud dispersed and
daylight reappeared. The earth was unrecognizable; everything had
disappeared under a thick shroud of calcined dust.”
“And the houses, were they buried in the cinders?” asked Emile.
“At the foot of the mountain the dust thrown up by the volcano lay
deeper than the height of the tallest houses, and whole towns had
disappeared under the enormous bed of cinders. Amongst these were
Herculaneum and Pompeii. The volcano buried them alive.”
“With the inhabitants?” inquired Jules.
“With a small number, for most of them, like Pliny and his mother, had
time to flee to Messina. To-day, after being buried eighteen centuries,
Herculaneum and Pompeii are exhumed by the miner’s pick, just as they
were when caught by the cloud of volcanic cinders. Vineyards cover them
where they are not yet cleared.”
“These vineyards, then, are the roofs of houses!” said Emile.
“Higher than the roofs of houses. The traveler who visits the quarters
not yet uncovered, but made accessible by means of wells dug for the
purpose, descends under-ground to a great depth.”
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