In the towns and villages around the volcano the destruction of property was very great, but the people generally escaped by timely flight.
In all the towns the terror was wide-spread. Nine distinct craters were opened, and lava streams, some of them sixteen feet deep, ran down the sides of the, mountains, destroying everything in their paths. Several of the villages were almost entirely buried in ashes, as ancient Pompeii was in the eruption previously described. Even in Naples, people were almost smothered with the shower of dust, cinders, and sand that poured down for days. Every window was kept closed, and every traveller through the streets was compelled to protect himself by carrying an umbrella; and there were serious fears, on the part of the timid, that the beautiful Italian city of to-day was to play the tragic part of Pompeii in a repetition of the terrible scenes of eighteen hundred years ago.
THE CRATER OF VESUVIUS.
Many people lost their lives, some in consequence of remaining to protect their property, and others from venturing too near out of motives of curiosity. At one time a group of fifty or more people were surrounded by the lava, and burned to death in sight of those who were powerless to aid them. They were standing on a little hill, and did not see, until too late, that the lava had flowed around it, and placed them on an island, as it were, with a red-hot river all around them. Many others were burned by the lava and the hot blasts which came from it in various parts of its course. A gentleman who witnessed the eruption thus describes the scene in a letter written from Naples on the 27th of April, 1872:—
STORY OF AN EYE-WITNESS.
“Yesterday morning I went out to get a carriage to go up Mount Vesuvius, and on my way I was asked by a respectable looking man in the street if I had heard the news of the night. He then told me that hundreds of people, who had gone up the night before to see the burning lava in the Atrio di Cavallo, were dead. I had seen the mountain at eleven o’clock the night before, when there was a stream of lava running from the top of the cone into the Atrio—that is, the valley between Vesuvius and the adjoining hill, the Somma, where there seemed to be a lake of fire. Later in the night there was a tremendous eruption, a large crater opening suddenly between the Observatory and the Atrio di Cavallo, across the path of the visitors, it is said, of a mile in diameter. We started from Naples at eight o’clock. The view of the mountain was magnificent. An enormous cloud of dense white smoke was ascending to an immense height above the mountain, like great fleeces of cotton wool, quite unlike any cloud I ever saw. I could see the lava rushing from several openings to the right of and above the Observatory, but below the cone. The lava was still flowing from the cone into the Atrio, but no ash or dust was thrown up. We drove on to Resina, where the population were in fearful excitement, not knowing what to do, and apparently apprehensive of instant death—everybody making signs to us, and telling us to go back. We went on to the Piazza di Pugliano, where we were stopped and told that no one was allowed to go up the mountain, by order of the police. However, after some expostulation, I took a guide on the box and started again.
AN ISLAND OF FIRE.