A countryman of ours who attempted to come down just behind us was not quite as successful as ourselves. He managed to pitch forward and turn a very pretty somersault; but the exercise did not improve his personal appearance or his temper. When he brought himself to rights, and reached the place where the horses were standing, he was very much dilapidated, and as cross as a bear with a chewed ear.
It is hard work to ascend Vesuvius, but it is jolly fun to come down.
DESCENT OF VESUVIUS.
We mounted our animals and came away. On the steepest part of the descending road, we tried to get up a race, thinking that the laws of gravitation would help us. Part of the beasts were induced to run, but there were two or three out of which no speed could be made faster than a walk. Even a descent as steep as the roof of an ordinary house had no temptations for them, and I wanted to try the experiment of flinging them over a precipice, to see whether they could be started into anything like a respectable pace. I have my doubts about it; and had they been flung from a perpendicular cliff, I think they would have come down through the air as majestically and as calmly as a parachute descends from a balloon.
When we reached Resina, we rode to Herculaneum. The modern discovery of this city resulted from digging a well in the year 1709. The site of the city had been lost, owing to the great depth—nearly one hundred feet—of the solid material which covered it. Properly speaking, Herculaneum was destroyed by liquid mud, rather than by burning lava. Since the destruction of the city, there have been six different overflows of lava, so that for all practical purposes the site is covered with this solid material.
When the well referred to was being made, the workmen came upon another well; an ancient affair, nearly eighty feet from the surface. Several works of art were brought to light, but for some reason the government of Naples prohibited the explorations. Thirty years later, they have been renewed, and have since been prosecuted at different intervals. At the present time the excavations are continued with much zeal, and startling discoveries are being made.
