At the end of this period Vesuvius was richly covered with vegetation, even within the crater. But since the year 1650, there has not been ten years pass without an eruption.
The form of the mountain has quite changed, and a little mountain has grown up out of the old broad topped one, as you may see in the above picture.
HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII.
These cities which were of great extent and importance, seem to have been almost forgotten during more than 1600 years. They are not often mentioned in Roman history, and, strange to say, the Latin writers who describe the eruption of Vesuvius, by which they must have been buried, have said nothing about them, except a very vague allusion or two, which would hardly have attracted any notice, if what I am going to tell you of, had not happened.
In the year 1713, as some people were sinking a well, they discovered two statues, one of Hercules, and the other of Cleopatra; and continuing to dig in several directions, they found they had got into a Roman theatre, and after a while they discovered that this Theatre was that of the City of Herculaneum. But in consequence of the hardness of the ground, and the great depth of the city under the surface, which is one hundred feet, they have only been able to clear out a very few buildings, and those cannot be seen except by torchlight, so that very little is known about it.
I cannot tell you exactly how the ruins of Pompeii were first discovered to be the remains of a city. It appears that an architect, who was employed to make a subterranean canal to convey water to the town of Torre dell'Annunziata, nearly 300 years ago, met with some fragments of buildings; and about eighty years afterwards, enough was seen to convince the discoverers that the ruins were extensive. In the year 1755, a regular plan of excavation was commenced, and nearly the whole city is now exposed to the light of day.
The situation of Pompeii is considerably further from the crater of Vesuvius than that of Herculaneum, and to that circumstance is owing the superiority of its preservation, and the greater moveableness of the substances which covered it. It is probable that both cities were originally assailed by alluvions, or streams of mud, such as I told you of some time ago, as well as by showers of cinders and stones. But while Pompeii was only fourteen or fifteen feet below the surface, and never had anything besides cinders and earth above it, several streams of lava flowed over Herculaneum, with layers of the different substances, which the volcano throws into the air, between them, so as to raise the surface one hundred feet.
