CITY OF NAPLES, BAY, AND MT. VESUVIUS.— SEAPORT OF SOUTH ITALY, NEAR THE SITES OF HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII.
A RIDE IN NAPLES.
At the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, where the Emperor Nero and other famous men of the olden time were accustomed to go to hear the prophecies on which their fate depended, we found a larger crowd than usual. A party of Americans were just emerging as we entered, and one of them intimated that the place laid over anything he had yet seen. Our torches were lighted, and we went forward quite a distance, through a tunnel eight or ten feet wide, out of which a smaller tunnel descended. Down this tunnel we walked until we came to the edge of a black, repulsive pool, over which the light shone very dimly. There was considerable smoke hanging over the water, and altogether the place was about as gloomy as anything I had ever seen. For all that could be discovered, the pool might be a thousand feet deep, and any number of miles across; to venture upon it might be like venturing upon the Atlantic Ocean, or any other great body of water. I noticed that the guides had their trousers rolled to the knee, and were barefooted. They fearlessly entered the water; two of them carried the torches, and three others backed themselves to the edge where there was a sort of stepping-stone.
“What is to be done now?” we asked of our private guide.
“Montez ze backs ze men of,” he replied. “You they carry porteez will to Grotto del Sibyl.”
HUMAN PACK MULES.
We hesitated to trust ourselves with these fellows, who might drown us, or throw us into a hole a few thousand feet deep, and leave us to come up again through the crater of Mount Vesuvius. But finally we concluded to try it, and so we mounted our two-legged steeds and rode off.
It happened that I was the heaviest of our party, and it also happened that the man who took me did not weigh as much as I did by at least fifty pounds. He trembled beneath me like a plateful of jelly in the hands of an intoxicated waiter, and I expected every moment he would drop me into the water. We went out from the shore into the smoky darkness, and in less than a minute we were completely at sea. Water was beneath and around us, and there was a black sky above that we could almost touch. No horizon was visible, and altogether we seemed to be in a world about ten feet in diameter, and without sun, moon, or stars.