Buried Cities, vol 1, Pompeii | Page 8

the wind will not
trouble us.'
"'Cross that melted rock?' my friends cried out. 'We should sink into it
and be burned alive.'
"But as we stood talking great stones were thrown out of the volcano.
They rolled down the mountainside close to us. If they had struck us it
would have been death. There was only one way to save ourselves. I
covered my face with my hat and rushed across the stream of lava. The
melted rock was so thick and heavy that I did not sink in. I only burned
my boots and scorched my hands. My friends followed me. On that
side we were safe. We climbed for half an hour. Then we came to the
head of our red river. It did not flow over the edge of the crater. Many
feet down from the top it had torn a hole through the cone. I shall never
forget the sight as long as I live. There was a vast arch in the black rock.
From this arch rushed a clear torrent of lava. It flowed smoothly like
honey. It glowed with all the splendor of the sun. It looked thin like
golden water.
"'I could stir it with a stick,' said one of my friends.
"'I doubt it,' I said. 'See how slowly it flows. It must be very thick and
heavy.'
"To test it we threw pebbles into it. They did not sink, but floated on
like corks. We rolled in heavier stones of seventy or eighty pounds.
They only made shallow dents in the stream and floated down with the
current. A great rock of three hundred pounds lay near. I raised it upon

end and let it fall into the lava. Very slowly it sank and disappeared.
"As the stream flowed on it spread out wider over the mountain.
Farther down the slope it grew darker and harder. It started from the
arch like melted gold. Then it changed to orange, to bright red, to dark
red, to brown, as it cooled. At the lower end it was black and hard and
broken like cinders.
"We climbed a little higher above the arch. There was a kind of
chimney in the rock. Smoke and stream were coming out of it. I went
close. The fumes of sulphur choked me. I reached out and picked some
lumps of pure sulphur from the edge of the rock. For one moment the
smoke ceased. I held my breath and looked down the hole. I saw the
glare of red-hot lava flowing beneath. The mountain was a pot, full of
boiling rock."
Another man writes of a visit in 1868, a quieter year.
"At first we climbed gentle slopes through vineyards and fields and
villages. Sometimes we came suddenly upon a black line in a green
meadow. A few years before it had flowed down red-hot. Further up we
reached large stretches of rock. Here wild vines and lupines were
growing in patches where the lava had decayed into soil. Then came
bare slopes with dark hollow and sharp ridges. We walked on old stiff
lava-streams. Sometimes we had to plod through piles of coarse, porous
cinders. Sometimes we climbed over tangled, lumpy beds of twisted,
shiny rock. Sometimes we looked into dark arched tunnels. Red
streams had once flowed out of them. A few times we passed near fresh
cracks in the mountain. Here steam puffed out.
"At last we reached a broad, hot piece of ground. Here were smoking
holes. The night before I had looked at them with a telescope from the
foot of the mountain. I had seen red rivers flowing from them. Now
they were empty. Last night's lava lay on the slope, cooled and black. I
was standing on it. My feet grew hot. I had to keep moving. The air I
breathed was warm and smelled like that of an iron foundry. I pushed
my pole into a crack in the rock. The wood caught fire. I was standing
on a thin crust. What was below? I broke out a piece of the hard lava. A
red spot glared up at me. Under the crust red-hot lava was still flowing.
I knew that it would be several years before it would be perfectly cool."
So for three centuries people have watched Vesuvius at work. But she
is much older than that--thousands of years older--older than any city or

country or people in the world. In all that time she has poured out
millions of tons of matter--lava, huge glassy boulders, little pebbles of
pumice stone, long shining hairs, fine dust or ashes. All these things are
different forms of melted rock. Sometimes the steam blows the liquid
into fine dust; sometimes it breaks it into little pieces and fills them
with