of seeing the mountain by moonlight; after passing through Portici, we
reached Resina about seven o’clock, where we left the carriage to await
our return, and reconvey us to Naples. Taking a conductor from the house
of Salvatori, whose family are esteemed the most respectable guides of
the mountain, we immediately commenced our ascent. A number of asses are
constantly in attendance at this point, for the purpose of assisting such
as are incapable of walking, or apprehensive of fatigue, and which are
able to convey their riders two-thirds of the way towards the summit;
but, in order that I might acquire a more correct idea of the nature of
the road, we gave the preference to walking.
We proceeded along a fair road, until we arrived at a house about half
way to the hermitage, where we rested a short time, and refreshed
ourselves with wine and water; after this the road gradually became
worse, and at length so bad that if I had not, on former occasions,
witnessed the astonishing powers of asses and mules, I should have
conceived it impossible for them to have ascended it. We reached the
hermitage about half after eight o’clock, and at the suggestion of our
guide, recruited ourselves with some of the hermit’s bread and wine; and
then began the more arduous part of our journey. The road soon became
very soft, being constituted of the light dust which had been thrown out
from the crater; interspersed, however, with large and sharp stones,
ejected from the same source; some of which were of such immense size,
that did we not bear in mind the astonishing powers of elementary fire,
we could scarcely credit the possibility of such masses being hurled to
this distance, from out of the bowels of the mountain.
One of the greatest inconveniences I found in this ascent, was from
the particles of ashes insinuating themselves within my shoes, and
which annoyed my feet so much, that I was repeatedly compelled to take
them off, in order to get rid of the irritating matter. Hence I would
recommend future travellers to ascend in white leathern boots.
At length we reached the only part of the mountain, which was at this
time in a burning state, and which was throwing out flames and sulphurous
vapour; when the guide taking me by the arm, conducted me over a place
where the fire and smoke issued from apertures between the stones we
walked upon, and which we could hear crackling under our feet every
instant, as if they were going to be separated, and to precipitate us
into the bowels of the mountain. The sublime description of Virgil did
not fail to occur to my recollection.
“By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high,
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly,
And flakes of mounting flames lick the sky;
Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown,
And shiver’d from their force come piecemeal down.
Oft liquid fires of burning sulphur glow,
Nurs’d by the fiery spring that burns below.”—DRYDEN.
My imagination, I admit, was actively alive to the possible accidents
which might have occurred; I followed, however, with all the confidence
which my conviction of being under the care of a cautious leader, did not
fail to inspire. My guide appeared highly gratified with the incident,
asserting that it was the first time one deprived of sight had ever
ventured there; and adding, that he was sure it would much surprise the
king, when the circumstance became known to him, in the report which is
daily made of the persons who visit the mountain. The ground was too
hot under our feet, and the sulphurous vapour too strong to allow of
our remaining long in this situation; and when he thought he had given
us a sufficient idea of the nature of this part of the mountain, we
retired to a more solid and a cooler footing; previous to which, however,
he directed my walking-cane towards the flames, which shrivelled the
ferrule, and charred the lower part;—this I still retain as a memorial.
From hence we were conducted to the edge of a small crater, now
extinguished, from whence about two months before, the Frenchman,
rivalling the immortality of Empedocles—
“Deus immortalis haberi,
Dum cupit Empedocles ardentem frigidus Ætuam
Insiluit.—”—HOR.
and desirous of the glory of dying a death worthy of the great nation,
plunged into the fiery abyss. The guide placed my hand on the very spot
where he was stated to have last stood, before he thus rashly entered
upon eternity.
I was anxious to have proceeded up the cone to the border of the superior
and large crater, but our guide objected, indeed refused to conduct us to
it, unless we awaited the dawn of morning; the moon, he said, was fast
descending, so that we should be involved in darkness before we could
attain it; and that consequently it would be attended with risk in the
extreme to make the attempt.
This was a check to the completion of my anxious wishes, but our
arrangements at Naples neither made it convenient to my friend, or
myself, to remain until morning; nor would it have been pleasant to have
spent some hours here without refreshment, more particularly as I had
left my coat behind near the hermitage, and at this elevation we found it
extremely cold.
After spending a short time in examining some of the immense masses of
calcined rock, some of them forming solid cubes of twenty feet diameter,
and which had been at different times thrown out by the volcanic power;
we began to retrace our steps towards the hermitage, distant, as our
guide informed us, four miles, but which must have been an over-rated
estimate. As we approached this latter place, we met a party ascending
the mountain, with an intention of waiting the break of day, so as to
enable them to reach the very summit.
We now partook freely of the good hermit’s provisions, and enjoyed his
Lachrymæ Christi, both white and red; which of course he had no objection
to, as he expected to be well paid for it; he is probably influenced by
motives of this nature in residing here, although he is said to enjoy
a small pension from the king. The present hermit has not been long
resident; the former, a very old man, having retired a few years since
to spend the remnant of his days in the bosom of his family. Of course
the tenant of this seclusion is a monk, but in the present day we have
few instances of voluntary and solitary retirement from the busy haunts
of men, on the mere score of religious feeling, and we can scarcely, in
the present instance, attribute a lonely residence, in the midst of such
dangerous circumstances, to this principle alone.
But the danger of the situation is probably not so great as might be
imagined: to the common eruptions our recluse must be accustomed, and
of course has had experience of their comparative innocence; and with
respect to the more important ones, it is certain, that a variety of
indicating circumstances have generally preceded them, well understood
by those who are exposed to their agency, and which give timely and
sufficient warning; besides, our hermit is not so solitary a being as
many who move on the busy stage of life; for the number of parties that
visit his cell, must afford him considerable intercourse with society,
and was it otherwise, we know how much we are the creatures of habit,
which can even reconcile us to incompatibles. Some think a ship a prison,
nay, Dr. Johnson says, it is “the worst of prisons, for you have no means
of escaping,” and yet there are many, who, from custom, are never more
happy than in one.
The hermit placed his book before us, containing the names of those who
had visited his cell, and we found them accumulated from all nations,
and largely interspersed with observations in verse and prose; but
as for their beauty and point I shall leave this to be determined by
those who may think well to inspect them. My friend was anxious that I
should contribute my mite to this book of scraps, when, as my mind was
not a little elate, with the idea of having so easily surmounted the
difficulties which my friends had urged against my present excursion, I
put down a couplet to the following effect:
Some, difficulties, meet full many;
I find them not, nor seek for any.
It was in this book the Frenchman wrote his intention of destroying
himself, and fortunate was it for the guide, that he made it known
in this manner, and exonerated him from the suspicion, which would
otherwise have attached to him, of having been implicated in his death.
I understood that the agitation, into which the poor fellow was thrown
from the circumstance itself, and his apprehensions of the consequences,
threw him into a fever, from which he was not sufficiently recovered to
be able, at this time, to leave his bed. The hermit unfortunately was
unacquainted with the French language, or the dreadful catastrophe might
have been prevented. The book was sent to the police, and the leaf in
question taken out, and retained, and every enquiry made to prove and
account for the circumstance.
Shortly after this period, I met with an English gentleman at Florence,
Mr. H⸺, who had travelled from France to Naples with this unfortunate
man, and lodged for a length of time in the same house with him, and who
informed me that he was a merchant of Nants, which place, in consequence
of his affairs becoming embarrassed, he had quitted with such money as
he was enabled to collect; and which being expended, his necessities
impelled him to this deliberate act of suicide, forgetting that in
thus terminating his sublunary cares, he was sacrificing his hopes and
interest in a future world.
“Shall worldly glory impotent and vain,
That fluctuates like the billows of the main?
Shall this with more respect thy bosom move,
Than zeal for crowns that never fade above?
Avert it Heaven! be here thy will resign’d
Religion claims this conquest o’er the mind.”
While we were upon the mountain, a party of Austrians had arrived with
the intention of reposing on the couches, which the hermit is provided
with for that purpose, and setting out for the crater at day-break. This
is perhaps a preferable plan to the one which we had adopted.
After remaining an hour at the hermitage we re-commenced our journey to
Resina by torch-light, the moon having sunk below the horizon. About
three o’clock we re-entered our carriage, and at four in the morning
arrived at Naples.
Before quitting the subject of Mount Vesuvius, it may be interesting
to give the following extract of a description of this now quiescent
volcano, when under a state of turbulence, with some observations on the
causes of this interesting natural phenomenon.
“Exclusive of those periods when there are actual eruptions, the
appearance and quantity of what issues from the mountain are various;
sometimes, for a long space of time together, it seems in a state of
almost perfect tranquillity; nothing but a small quantity of smoke
ascending from the volcano, as if that vast magazine of fuel, which
has kept alive for so many ages, was at last exhausted, and nothing
remained but the dying embers; then, perhaps, when least expected, the
cloud of smoke thickens, and is intermixed with flame; at other times,
quantities of pumice-stones and ashes, are thrown up with a kind of
hissing noise. For near a week the mountain has been more turbulent than
it has been since the small eruption, or rather boiling over of lava,
which took place about two months ago; and while we remained at the top,
the explosions were of sufficient importance to satisfy our curiosity
to the utmost. They appeared much more considerable there, than we had
imagined while at a greater distance; each of them was preceded by a
noise like thunder within the mountain, a column of thick black smoke
then issued out with great rapidity, followed by a blaze of flame; and
immediately after, a shower of cinders, and ashes, or red hot stones,
were thrown into the sky. This was succeeded by a calm of a few minutes,
during which, nothing issued but a moderate quantity of smoke and flame,
which gradually increased, and terminated in thunder and explosion as
before. These accesses and intervals continued with varied force while we
remained.
“When we first arrived, our guides placed us at a reasonable distance
from the mouth of the volcano, and on the side from which the wind came,
so that we were no way incommoded by the smoke. In this situation the
wind also bore to the opposite side, the cinders, ashes, and other fiery
substances, which were thrown up; and we ran no danger of being hurt,
except when the explosion was very violent, and when red hot stones,
and such heavy substances, were thrown like sky-rockets, with a great,
and prodigious force, into the air; and even these make such a flaming
appearance, and take so much time in descending that they are easily
avoided.”—MOORE’S VIEW, &c.
“There is no volcanic mountain in Europe, whose desolating paroxysms
have been so fatally experienced, and so accurately transmitted to us,
as those of Vesuvius. This mountain is well known to constitute one of
the natural wonders of the kingdom of Naples. Like Parnassus, it has been
said to consist of two summits, one of which, situated in a westward
direction, is called by the natives Somma; and the other, running in a
southern line, Proper Vesuvius, or Vesuvio; and it is this last alone,
which emits fire and smoke. The two hills, or summits, are separated by a
valley about a mile in length, and peculiarly fertile in its production.
“The eruptions of this mountain have been numerous in almost every age of
the Christian era, and on many occasions prodigiously destructive. The
eruptions of volcanoes are usually attended by some shocks like those of
earthquakes, although commonly less violent. Open volcanoes continually
throw out, in more or less abundance, smoke, ashes, and pumice-stones,
or light cinders, but their most formidable effects are produced by
a torrent of ignited lava, which, like a vast deluge of liquid, or
semi-liquid fire, lays waste the country over which it runs, and buries
all the work of human art. In March, 1767, Vesuvius began to throw out a
considerable quantity of ashes and stones, which raised its summit in the
course of the year no less than two hundred feet, forming first a little
mountain of pumice-stones within the crater, which, by degrees, became
visible above the margin. The smoke, which was continually emitted, was
rendered luminous at night, by the light derived from the fire burning
below it. In August, some lava had broken through this mountain, and in
September, it had filled the space left between it and the former crater.
On the 13th and 14th of October, there were heavy rains, which, perhaps,
supplied the water concerned in the eruption that shortly followed.
“On the morning of the 19th, clouds of smoke were forced, in continual
succession, out of the mouth of the volcano, forming a mass like a large
pine-tree, which was lengthened into an arch, and extended to the island
of Caprea, twenty-eight miles off; it was accompanied by much lightning,
and by an appearance of meteors like shooting stars. A mouth then opened
below the crater, and discharged a stream of lava, which Sir William
Hamilton ventured to approach within a short distance, imagining that
the violence of the confined materials, must have been exhausted; but on
a sudden, the mountain opened with a great noise at a much lower point,
about a quarter of a mile from the place where he stood, and threw out
a torrent of lava, which advanced straight towards him, while he was
involved in a shower of small pumice-stones and ashes, and in a cloud of
smoke. The force of the explosions were so great, that doors and windows
were thrown open by them at the distance of several miles. The stream
of lava was in some places two miles broad, and sixty or seventy feet
deep; it extended about six miles from the summit of the mountain, and
remained hot for several weeks.
“In 1794, a still more violent eruption occurred; it was expected by the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood, the crater being nearly filled, and
the water in the wells having subsided; showers of immense stones were
projected to a great height, and ashes were thrown out so copiously, that
they were very thick at Taranto, two hundred and fifty miles off; some of
them were also wet with salt water. A heavy noxious vapour, supposed to
be carbonic acid, issued in many places from the earth, and destroyed the
vineyards in which it was suffered to remain stagnant. A part of the town
of Torre de Greco was overwhelmed by a stream of lava, which ran through
it into the sea.
“The shocks of earthquakes and the eruptions of volcanoes, are, in all
probability, modifications of the effects of one common cause: the same
countries are subject to both of them; and where the agitation produced
by an earthquake extends farther than there is any reason to suspect a
subterraneous commotion, it is probably propagated through the earth
nearly in the same manner as a noise conveyed through the air.
“Volcanoes are found in almost all parts of the world, but most commonly
in the neighbourhood of the sea; and especially in small islands: for
instance, Italy, Sicily, Japan, the Caribbees, the Cape Verd islands,
the Canaries, and the Azores: there are also numerous volcanoes in
Mexico, and Peru, especially Pichincha, and Cotopaxi. The subterraneous
fires, which are constantly kept up in an open volcano, depend, perhaps
in general, on sulphurous combinations, and decompositions, like the
heating of a heap of wet pyrites, or an union of sulphur and iron
filings: but in other cases, they may, perhaps, approach more nearly
to the nature of common fires. A mountain of coal has been burning in
Siberia for nearly a century, and most probably has undermined, in some
degree, the neighbouring country.
“The immediate cause of an eruption appears to be very frequently an
admission of water from the sea, or from subterraneous reservoirs; it
has often happened that boiling water has frequently been discharged in
great quantities from a volcano; and the force of steam, is, perhaps,
more adequate to the production of violent explosions, than any other
power in nature. The consequence of such an admission of water, into
an immense collection of ignited materials, may, in some measure, be
understood, from the accidents which occasionally happen in foundries;
thus, a whole furnace of melted iron was a few years ago dissipated into
the air in Colebrook Dale, by the effects of a flood which suddenly
overflowed it. The phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes are amply
illustrated by the particular accounts, transmitted to the Royal Society
by Sir William Hamilton, of those which have happened at different times
in Italy.”—POLEHAMPTON.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary exertions of the preceding night, I
arose at nine o’clock on the following morning, without being sensible
of any inconvenience, and commenced my preparations for leaving Naples.
My friend C⸺ had engaged to accompany me, which promised to be, indeed,
an important accession to my comforts and gratifications, as I was sure
of not only a warmly attached friend, but a most amusing and intelligent
fellow-traveller, from whom I was certain to derive essential advantages,
as he was well acquainted with almost every European language. Perhaps
few had experienced more vicissitudes of fortune than this gentleman,
or been exposed to a greater variety of dangers and adventures, many of
which bordered not a little on the romantic.
The following incidents, which are of recent occurrence, appear so
interesting, that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of relating them.
On returning from South America, in the beginning of the year 1815, he
visited Paris; and soon afterwards Bonaparte regained possession of
it. One day as he was passing through an encampment near the city, his
passport was demanded by the soldiers, when he presented them with an
American one; he was immediately accused of being a spy, and taken
before the commandant, who debated whether he should be instantly put
to death, or sent a prisoner to Paris: the latter plan was, however,
adopted. On their way, his escort of infantry were overtaken by a party
of intoxicated dragoons, who wanted to take their prisoner from them, and
who on being refused, made attempts to effect their purpose by force.
They were however disappointed, the infantry placing my friend against a
wall, and protecting him from their efforts to cut him down with their
sabres; they succeeded at length in conducting him safe to the General
Commandant at Paris. This officer was soon satisfied with his innocence,
and liberated him, directing at the same time one of his aid-de-camps to
accompany him into the street, and there shake hands with him, in order
to convince the mob that he was a friend.
The other adventure was during the late Neapolitan and Sicilian
revolution; Mr. C⸺ happened to lodge in the same house with our
countryman, General Church, who commanded the Sicilian troops, forming
the garrison of Palermo. One evening the general had fallen into a
personal affray with some of his insubordinate soldiers, and with
difficulty disengaged himself from them uninjured; supposing that he had
retired to his hotel, they made an attack upon it, and in their rage
and disappointment destroyed the whole of its furniture. My friend, and
two other English gentlemen, were at the time in the house. The former
was lying in bed, seriously ill; they obliged him, however, to rise,
and while one of the ruffians stood with a dagger at his breast, the
others emptied his trunks, and took away everything except his pantaloons
and a great coat, and threatened to murder him if he did not produce
more money, stating that they were sure an Englishman must be better
provided. One of the other gentlemen was also ill, but being warned by
the noise, that something unpropitious was going forward, he contrived to
conceal his writing-desk, with his money and papers, under the pillow;
when, getting into bed, he made them believe by well groaning, and the
assistance of a naturally pale and ghastly-looking face, that he was
dying; they were actually afraid to touch him, and walked off, contenting
themselves with what they could find about the room.
The third gentleman was treated with tolerable civility; one of the
robbers disrobed himself, and putting on the clothes which were lying
on a chair, made a simple exchange of property, which some consider no
robbery. They cleared the table of his money, and various other articles
which he had laid upon it the night before; amongst the rest, however,
was a small bit of printed paper, which considering of no value, they
threw on the floor; this was one of Hammersley’s bills for fifty pounds.
My friend had the misfortune of being deaf, as well as suffering
otherwise from ill health; it may be regarded as a curious incident in
our travelling connexion,—that I should want sight, and he hearing; the
circumstance is somewhat droll, and afforded considerable amusement to
those whom we travelled with, so that we were not unfrequently exposed to
a jest on the subject, which we generally participated in, and sometimes
contributed to improve.
We agreed with a vittureno to leave Naples on Monday, June 11, and took
leave of our friends, and made our other arrangements accordingly; but
on returning home on the Sunday evening, I found the vittureno had been
to state the danger of setting off alone, on account of the number of
robbers on the road; and that they should wait to accompany another
voiture, which was to set off on the Tuesday; we accordingly reconciled
ourselves to the delay, notwithstanding some of our friends, acquainted
with the ways of these fellows, expressed their opinion that we should
be teased in this manner for at least two or three days, notwithstanding
we had a written agreement for our departure, signed by the proprietor;
we now, however, to make more certain for the following day, had another
drawn up, with a legal stamp to it, and in which it was stipulated, that
if he failed to set off on the next morning, he should forfeit half his
fare.