The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

Having thus given the accounts of Kotzebue, and also of an English tourist, as to Pompeii and Herculaneum, we will now add the narrative of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Professor Silliman, who passed over the same ground in 1851. All these views are given, because the subject is one of so much intrinsic interest, and because some objects are mentioned by each writer that are not by the others. Professor Silliman says: “We passed rapidly along through Portici, Resina, and Torre del Greco,[^[6]] which form one long-continued street, lying over Herculaneum, a large city, whose entombed remains were far beneath our carriage wheels. Vesuvius was on our left, quiet and sublime. Clouds vailed its crater from our view, but its venerable sides were enveloped in the black drapery of its own lava floods. The currents have often flowed over the road on which we were traveling. Here and there, the lava had been cut through in the streets, and it protrudes in black, rocky masses, upon which many of the houses have been erected. Lava formed the walls of the houses, and the fences around the fields, and lava, only lava, was everywhere around us. After a short interval of cultivated fields, we arrived in Torre del Annunciata, in a street similar to those we had passed, and surrounded by a country in the highest state of cultivation, where every foot of the rich volcanic soil is made available. Farm-houses and villas appeared clustering around the eastern and southern foot of Vesuvius, and creeping up its sloping sides, so reckless are the people of past catastrophes, although Herculaneum reposes in its profound grave at the foot of the mountain, and the great sepulcher of Pompeii, with its funereal monuments, is in full view before them. They have also been very recently warned again, by the terrific eruption of February, 1850, which, bursting out back of Vesuvius, on the east, took an unwonted direction, thus giving another proof that no situation on or near the mountain is safe; but still the inhabitants repose in careless security.

[6]. “Torre del Greco, a town containing eighteen thousand people, was overwhelmed, in 1794, by an eruption of lava from Vesuvius, flowing from the middle of its western slope, only five miles above the town. The melted torrent buried the place, and inundated the sea, encroaching upon it one-third of a square mile.”

“As we drove slowly onward, checking the horses from time to time, in order to realize the scenes around us, Antonio, from the coach-box, suddenly exclaimed, ‘There is Pompeii!’ We eagerly looked, and saw a low, green ridge of land, covered by grass and shrubs. It appeared as an extended mound, over which the traveler might have driven, as thousands have heedlessly done in centuries past, unconscious that a city of the dead slumbered beneath the hoofs of the horses. Only a few minutes elapsed, before standing erect in the carriage, we discerned the still naked heaps of pumice that have been thrown out during the excavations; and immediately after, in breathless silence, we were at the door of the house of Diomede! An elegant country-house, a Roman villa, just outside of the walls of the city, still stands, almost eighteen hundred years after the great catastrophe. Its columns are erect, its walls entire, and its open doors seem to invite the stranger to enter; but the family are not there, and silence reigns in the halls of Diomede!

“I never before felt as I did when I entered this deserted house—pensive, solemn, and in full sympathy with the tragical story. Sentinels still keep these doors; not the helmeted Roman, who, firm and unmoved, surveyed the storm of fire but yielded not to fear, preferring to die at his post,[^[7]] but Neapolitans stationed there by the government to prevent invasion of the ruins. One there was, a veteran, whose snowy hair, and visage so deeply marked by time, made us almost feel as if he must have been present when the volcanic tempest raged, and had, Salathiel-like, come down to our time to relate the events of those dreadful days. But a garrulous guide, who spoke tolerable English, placed himself at the head of our party, and was our cicerone through an intensely interesting day. We mused for a few minutes in the vacant rooms of the house of Diomede, walked upon the still beautiful mosaic pavements and floors, passed through the dormitories, the triclinium, the impluvium, and the hall for conversation; observed the water-cistern, and the channels worn in the stone curb by the friction of the rope, and then descended to the vaults beneath, in which so many members of the family met their fate. This gallery is strongly arched with brick, and was used as a wine-cellar, as appears from twenty-five amphoræ still remaining there, and which were found filled with volcanic matter.

[7]. “In the Pompeian museum at Naples, we afterward saw the skull of such a Roman, whose head was still covered by his helmet, and whose skeleton was found at his station in the gate of Pompeii.”

“On the twenty-fourth of August, in the year 79 of our own era, and not long after midday, Vesuvius broke the repose of untold ages, and resumed, with tragical energy, his ancient reign of fire, awakening the slumbering echoes of his power with terrible detonations and fearful earthquakes. A darkness that might be felt, shrouded in the profoundest gloom the midday sun, and ashes fell like snow upon the mountain, the plain, the bays of Naples and Baiæ, and far into the surrounding country. Rain from the condensed steam of the eruption deluged the whole district; torrents of fluid mud, formed by the ashes and water, swept over every obstruction, and filled to overflowing every depression of the surface. The terrified inhabitants, overwhelmed by superstitious fears, joined the droves of domestic animals, whose keener instincts had already impelled them to desert a district filled with sulphureous vapors, and vibrating with ominous and unwonted sounds, wandering, they knew not where, in search of some place where the frightful evidences of the wrath of the gods might be avoided.

“But the family of Diomede sought refuge from the falling pumice under the strong arch of the wine-cellar, strong enough to resist and sustain the load of falling materials, but not proof against the deluge of volcanic mud, whose unexpected inundation brought death to the mistress, her children, and fifteen female slaves. The record of the manner of their death is even now perfectly legible. The form of the mistress, with her back and head to the wall, with outstretched arms, is clearly delineated by the difference of color. Surrounding her are the impressions of the persons of seventeen others, various in stature, but all standing, save one infant in the arms. When these silent vaults were excavated, here stood the skeletons of these unfortunate people, the rich jewels of the mistress and of her daughter circling the bony fingers and wrists and neck. These we afterward saw in the museum at Naples, the left shoulder of the mother, as also the skull of the daughter, whose name, Julia, was engraved upon her bracelet. Equally strange and wonderful was it to see the cast of the bosom of this Roman matron, taken with lifelike precision, in the soft and fluid tufa. Her hand still grasped the purse, whose contents are also among the wonderful treasures of the same museum. Beyond the garden and the fish-pond, which are contiguous to the wine-cellar, there is a gateway where were found two skeletons, with valuable vessels and money; one hand held a rusted key, and the other a bag with coin and cameos, and vessels of silver and bronze were here. These are believed to have been the remains of the master Diomede and his servant. A wrapper contained eighty pieces of silver money, ten of gold, and some bronze. It appears highly probable that, having left the family in a place which was believed to be safe, they were engaged in transporting valuables to a place of deposit, when they were overtaken by the same deluge which destroyed their friends.

“The water-line to which the fluid magma rose in this quadrangular vaulted gallery, is still visible upon the walls, (some twelve to fifteen inches above the tallest head,) nearly even with several small apertures through which, as well as through the door, it probably flowed. It is not unlikely that this inundation was accompanied by torrents of carbonic acid and other noxious gases, so abundantly exhaled in more modern eruptions of Vesuvius, by which these refugees from the dangers above ground were perhaps so suddenly suffocated as to remain unmoved in the positions where they were found. The sudden death of the elder Pliny, who, his nephew says, was suffocated by a noxious exhalation upon the same occasion, and at no great distance from Pompeii, may, with much probability, be ascribed to the same cause.

“The facts now detailed clearly show that vast torrents of mud must have passed through the streets of Pompeii, since dry ashes and ejections of lapilli and pumice, unaided by water, could never have found their way into the interior of closed amphoræ, nor made perfect molds of the human form, nor left a level water-line upon the inner walls of close arched passages. The shower of materials which buried the city, was mainly composed of small pieces of white pumice and rounded lapilli of various colors, interspersed with some large projected masses of rock-bombs, such as Vesuvius has often thrown out in later times. These by their fall broke through the roofs, and at the places where they struck, depressed the mosaic pavements into a concave form, as we saw in several of the houses. A darker colored sand appears to have alternated with the pumice, and often forms a distinct and thick layer upon it. Numerous such alternations have been made out by the Neapolitan geologists, and we afterward saw the same order of stratification distinctly in another part of the town, where fresh excavations were going on. The fresh section here showed, that these loose materials fell much as snow falls in our northern climates when driven by the wind, being thicker in the angles than in the centers of the houses, and rising in curves corresponding to the elevations and depressions of the surface.

“The celebrated Appian way passed by the house of Diomede, and through Pompeii to Stabiæ. The road is now above ground, and is evidently as perfect as when Pompeii was buried. It is paved with large blocks of the ancient lava of Mount Somma, which, of course, proves the occurrence of early eruptions of the volcano, although at an unknown era. Deep ruts are worn by the wheels in the solid lava, which is as firm as trap, while the stones are strongly marked by the rust of the iron worn off from the wheel-tires. The furrows prove that the wheels were not more than four feet apart. This is proved also by the position of the stepping-stones for crossing the streets, which were so placed that the wheels passed between them. The stepping-stones were very large, and two and a half or three feet long, their longest diameter coinciding with the direction of the street; and they were laid so near to each other that the passengers could pass quite across the street from one side-walk to the opposite, without stepping down. There were side-walks in the principal streets, about three feet wide, and two feet above the pavement. The streets were paved with the same hard lava rock, and in many places it was worn into deep hollows by human feet, thus proving the high antiquity of the city. The street near the barracks is only thirteen feet wide. We passed through one street in which the pavement was in very bad order; the ruts were worn irregularly and very deep, the stones were tilted out of the proper level, and there, as sometimes happens in modern cities, the street commissioners had evidently not done their duty.