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We now wonder whether we shall still find Torre Annunziata the same thriving town, full of energy, work, and action, Torre Annunziata of which we are so proud, which is a glory of ours, since its life has a great importance, and its population is good active; and very laborious. This is our hope as we enter it. Alas! Here are some wagons coming with furniture, and there is a sick man, an old man on a mattress, laying in a small carriage. They are all slowly moving towards Naples.
Yes also Torre Annunziata is dead! All the houses are closed, all the working shops are deserted. Foundries, manufactures, establishments, all is closed. Never could we have believed that in a single hour, in a short hour of desperate panic, all this could have happened, and that this town this magnificent instrument of work and industry, should be stopped and destroyed like the pines up yonder, in the great valley of the Oratorio at Boscotrecase.
At mid-night, the nine tenth of the population, at the terrible cry that the lava is advancing towards the city, begin to escape. In one single night 30,000 people have abandoned their roof, have gathered their dear ones, their goods, and have fled to Nocera, Castellamare, Sarno, Salerno, Naples, Calabria, Basilicata. All have fled in one single night. But why? And how has this possibly happened? Men of the people in silent groups, hardly answer our queries; they simply point to a street towards which people, alighting from carriages and autos, direct their steps. The lava is there, much nearer than that which stopped outside Boscotrecase the other night, and which invaded it altogether later in the night. The lava is yonder, on the livid background, darkened by the clouds wrapping up the mountain, there where a large white smoke arises, pushed by the wind. It is the road which leads to Boscotrecase, the same road which day before yesterday, while laughing and jesting, we saw full of carriages, cabs, and merry people. Now, all is changed. From that road the lava has come down. The great white smoke leads us, while the wind blows harder. We see trees bending down, they are cypress, the rich cypress of the cemetery of Torre Annunziata, one of the neatest, most poetical cemeteries I ever saw.
And the monster is here, quite near. The lava is here, its scorching monstruosity is here, in front of the cemetery, but somehow it has branched out, it has not touched the ground sacred to the dead. It comes down in deformed and grotesque waves, wide, high, incandescent on the sides and on the edges, it has unwalled a house, it has destroyed the railway of the Circumvesuviana but, happily, it has not touched the cemetery.
A dead silence reigns among the people grouped on the low walls, on stone piles, behind the gates, and all gaze at the lava, at the monster, but thank heaven, the picturesque cemetery is still untouched.
But what will happen in the night what will happen to-morrow? Can't the dead rest even under the ground, and they who will want to pray to-morrow on the tombs of their dear ones, will they be obliged to realize that a new mound of earth, and this time of fire, has buried them, and their graves, for the second time.