At the foot of Vesuvius a great stream of red-hot lava mud slid down the mountain side, straight across fields and roads, and over farms and villages, slowly but steadily pushing its way, the country people fleeing before it with such of their property as they were able to bundle on to carts or carry away with them.
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POMPEII.
But on the whole the people were not so frightened after the first outbreak as one might have expected.
Yet they had every reason to be, because near the mountain stand the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which was overwhelmed, not by lava, but by just such a fall of ashes from a great eruption of Vesuvius about thirty years after the death of Christ.
The ashes had fallen lightly at first, but so thickly that in a very short space of time the whole city was buried under tons of it, and the people were crushed or suffocated in their homes.
You will find the whole story of it in the novel called The Last Days of Pompeii, but if you ever go to Pompeii the ruins which have been dug out tell their own story better than any book can do.
You walk through silent streets of beautifully decorated houses, of shops, theatres, and baths; the pavement is scored with the wheelmarks of the chariots, and in some of the houses the skeletons of the inhabitants are still to be seen.
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