By Friday, April 13th, the eruption was practically at an end. Vesuvius had spent itself in the enormous convulsion of the 7th and 8th and the subsequent minor explosions and had returned to its normal state, ceasing to give any signs of life, except the cloud of smoke which still rose from its crater and spread like a thick curtain over and around the mountain. Looked at from Naples, there was none of the familiar aspects of the volcano, with its output of smoke and ashes by day and fiery gleam by night. Now it lay buried in darkness and obscurity, clothed in a dense pall of smoke. At Rome there was sunshine, but twenty miles south hung a misty veil, and twenty-five miles above Naples a zone of semi-obscurity began, blotting out the sun, whose light trickled through with a sickly glare. Everything was whitened with powdery dust; pretty white villas were daubed and dripping with mud, and people were busy shoveling the ashes from their roofs.
The crowds at the stations resembled millers, their clothes flour covered; the Campania presented the appearance of a Dakota prairie after a blizzard of snow, though everything was gray instead of white. The ashes lay in drifts knee deep. As the volcano was approached semi-night replaced the day, the gloom being so deep that telegraph poles twenty feet away could not be seen. Breathing was difficult, and the smoke made the eyes water. At Naples, however, a favorable wind had cleared the air of smoke, the sun shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy once more. The goggles and eye-screens had disappeared, but the streets were anything but comfortable, for some six thousand men were at work clearing the ashes from the roofs and main streets and piling them in the middle of the narrow streets, making the passage of vehicles very difficult and the sidewalks far from comfortable for foot passengers.
But while brightness and joy reigned at Naples, there were gruesome scenes within the volcanic zone. At Bosco Trecase soldiers carried on the work of exhumation, being able to work only an hour at a time on account of the advanced stage of decomposition of the bodies. Many of these were shapeless, unrecognizable masses of flesh and bones, while others were little disfigured. To lessen the danger of an epidemic the bodies were buried as quickly as possible in quicklime.
On Sunday, the 15th, the searchers at Ottejano were surprised at finding two aged women still alive, after six days’ entombment in the ruins. They were among those who had been buried by the falling walls a week before. The rafters of the house had protected them, and a few morsels of food in their pockets aided to keep them alive. At some points there the ashes were ten feet deep. At San Giuseppe bodies of women were found in whose hands were coins and jewels, and one woman held a jewelled rosary. This recalls the results of exploration at Herculaneum and Pompeii, where were similar instances of death overtaking the victims of the volcano while fleeing with their jewels in their hands.
It is interesting to learn that two men stood heroically to their post of duty during the whole scene of the explosion, Professor Matteucci, Director of the Royal Observatory, and his American assistant, Professor Frank A. Perret, of New York. Though the building occupied by them was exposed to the full force of the rain of stones from the burning mountain, they remained undauntedly at their post through that week of terror. On the 14th some of that venturesome fraternity, the newspaper correspondents, reached their eyrie on the highest habitable point on Vesuvius and heard the story of their experiences.
THE HEROES OF THE OBSERVATORY.
For several days Professors Matteucci and Perret and their two servants had been cut off from the outside world and bombarded by the volcano, their rations consisting of bread, cheese and dried onions, until on Friday a hardy guide was induced to push through to them with some provisions. During the eruption the Professor had kept at his instruments, taking observations day and night and making calculations in the midst of the inferno. Roughly dressed, he looked like a Western cowboy after a hard ride in a dust storm. The portico where he stood was knee deep in ashes, and from the observatory terrace narrow paths had been cut through the ashes, but as far as the eye could reach an ocean of ashes and twisted rivers were alone visible, with Vesuvius rising grimly in the midst. The great monster was enveloped in a cloak of white, as if buried under a snowstorm, its surface being here and there slit with gulches in which lava ran. At the bottom of one of those gulches lay the wrecked remnants of the peninsular railway, a portion of its twisted cable protruding through the ashes. As the correspondents ascended the mountain they were surprised by the apparition of natives, men wrinkled with age, who emerged from dugouts just below the observatory and offered them milk and eggs, just as if they were ordinary visitors to the volcano. As they descended they heard the sound of a mandolin from one of these dugouts. Evidently Vesuvius had no terrors for these case-hardened veterans.
We have already told the story gleaned by the correspondents from the daring scientists. Matteucci completed his record of boldness on Friday, the 13th, by climbing to a point far above the observatory, at the imminent risk of his life, to observe the conditions then existing. From what he says he believed the end of the disturbance near, though he did not venture to predict. As for the ashes, which a light wind was then blowing in a direction away from Naples, he said: “The ill wind is now blowing good to other places, for ashes are the best fertilizer it is possible to use. It is merely a question just now of having too much of a good thing.”
This is a fact so far as the volcanic ash is concerned. An examination of the ashes a few days ago shows that they will prove an active and valuable fertilizer. The fertile slopes of Vesuvius have ever been an allurement to the vine-grower, four crops a year being a temptation no possible danger could drive him from, and as soon as the mountain grows surely peaceful after this eruption, we shall find its farmers risking again the chance of its uncertain temper. But this is not the case with the land covered with lava and cinders. Time for their disintegration is necessary before they can be brought under cultivation, and this is a matter of years. After the great eruption of 1871-72 the land covered with cinders did not bear crops for seven years, and there is no reason that they will do so sooner on the present occasion. So for years to come much of the volcanic soil must remain a barren and desert void.