PLATE XXVII. POMPEII.
The Forum, with Vesuvius in the distance.
By this eruption Pompeii was buried under a layer of pumice and ashes 20 feet thick. For a long period of years the inhabitants of the neighbourhood came hither and digged up with their spades one thing or another, but then Pompeii sank into the night of oblivion and slumbered under the earth for fifteen hundred years. At last the town was discovered again, and excavations were commenced. Country houses, fields, and clumps of mulberry trees had sprung up on the deep bed of ashes. Not till fifty years ago did modern investigation take Pompeii seriously in hand, and now more than half the town is laid bare. Strangers can ride unhindered through the streets, look into the shops and baths, and admire the fine wall-paintings in the palaces of the great. The columns of Jupiter's temple, so long buried in complete darkness, are again lighted by the sun, and cast their shadows as of old over the stone flags of the Forum (Plate XXVII.). The Street of Tombs is exposed, and young cypresses grow up among the monuments. The dead, which were already buried when Vesuvius scattered its ashes over them, listen now to strange footsteps on the road. But the unfortunates who were buried alive under the shower of ashes have decayed and turned to dust. And yet they may still be seen in the museums, with distorted limbs and their faces to the ground. We see them in the position they assumed when they fell and the ashes were bedded close to their sides. Thus they remained lying for eighteen hundred years, imbedded as in a mould. Their bodies returned to the earth, but the empty space remained. By pouring plaster into these forms, life-like figures of persons have been reproduced just as they were when death overtook them. Here lies a woman who fell outside her house and grasped with convulsive fingers a bag full of gold and silver. Here is a man resting his heavy head on his elbow, and here a dog which has curled itself up before it was at last suffocated.
So the sleeping town has wakened to life again, and the dead have returned from the kingdom of shadows. The excavated pictures, sculptures, and art treasures of Pompeii, together with the whole arrangement of the town, the style of building and the inscriptions, have thrown an unexpected light on the life of antiquity. We can even read the passing conceits scribbled on the walls. At one corner a house is offered for hire from July I—"intending tenants should apply to the slave Primus." On another a jester advises an acquaintance: "Go and hang thyself." A citizen writes of a friend: "I have heard with sorrow that thou art dead—so adieu!" Another wall bears the following warning: "This is no place for idlers; go away, good-for-nothing." It is curious to read the names Sodom and Gomorrah, evidently scribbled by a Jew. Low down on the walls small schoolboys have practised writing the Greek alphabet, showing that Greek was included in their curriculum. And once were found written in charcoal, and only partly legible, the words, "Enjoy the fire, Christian," a scoff at the martyrs who, soaked in tar, were burned as torches in Nero's gardens.
From Naples we take a steamer for Egypt. After crossing the Bay of Naples we have to starboard the charming island of Capri. On its northern side you may swim or row in a shallow boat, under an arch of rock three feet high, into the Blue Grotto. Inside is a quiet crystal-clear sheet of water which extends more than 50 yards into the hill. The roof over its mirror is more than 160 feet high. The only light comes in through the small entrance. Owing to the reflections of the sky and water, everything in the grotto is blue, and stalactites hang like icicles from the roof and walls. If you dip an oar or your hand into the water it shines white as silver, owing to the reflection from the sandy bottom. It is possible to enter only in calm weather, or the boat would be stoved in against the rocky archway.
On a promontory to larboard appear the white houses and olive gardens of beautiful Sorrento, and then we steer out into the turquoise blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. To the south the rocky island of Stromboli rises from the waves with its ever-burning volcano, like a beacon. In the Straits of Messina we skirt the shores of Sicily and Calabria, which have so frequently suffered from terrible earthquakes. At last we are out in the wide, open Mediterranean. Italy sinks below the horizon behind us, and we steam eastward to Alexandria, the port of the land of the Pharaohs.
II
AFRICA
General Gordon
Seldom has the whole civilised world been so convulsed, so overwhelmed with sorrow, at the death of one man as it was when in January, 1885, the news flashed along the telegraph wires that Khartum had fallen, and that Gordon was dead.