The rocks are covered with sulphur and alum; and in my eagerness that we should all equally benefit by the sight, I wanted to persuade Ida just to take one peep. It would, however, have been a risk to do anything which even for a second might embarrass the action of her delicate lungs and weak heart. She tried to approach, but turned back with the feeling that one puff more would have suffocated her.
I think we all felt as if we were standing in one of the outer halls of a region never to be mentioned “to ears polite,” and almost too “Dantesque” to be pleasant. We gladly breathed a purer atmosphere as we passed out of the gate (inside which is a fabric of sulphur-works), and bent our steps between white walls on which the green lizards basked, and between fields of unripe corn and mulberry-trees, till we reached an open space commanding a fine view of the Gulf of Pozzuoli and the hills beyond. From thence we turned into the Capuchin church dedicated to S. Januarius, and said to be built over the spot where he suffered martyrdom in 305. There is a stone, on which he is believed to have been beheaded, let into the wall, and protected with an iron grating. It is seamed with red marks as of blood. It is very probably a stone on which he knelt and on which the blood fell. But a block, whether of stone or wood, for the purposes of beheading, is a modern invention. The Romans used a sword—as the Turks use a scymitar for that ghastly purpose to this day—and the patient knelt upright.
It was pleasant to rest in the cool church, which, humble as it is, is not without its quota of beautiful marbles, and is kept exquisitely clean, with fresh flowers on the altar, and all care taken of it as if the community were still there. We found only a lay brother left in charge. I think he said he had a companion. All the poor fathers were dispersed by Victor Emanuel's government, and Mass is only said on feast-days; though it seemed to be the only church in that immediate neighborhood, and the poor of the district must greatly miss the presence of the Capuchin fathers, those special friends of the poor.
As we came down the hill, we were met by peasant lads, who wanted us to buy lumps of sulphur and the skeletons of the pretty little fish called the sea-horse, which abound in this part of the Mediterranean, and which are just like the knights among chessmen. They may be seen alive in quantities in the aquarium at Brighton. They twist the tapering end of their tails round a fragment of sea-weed, or indeed, as the buoyancy of the water keeps them up, they need but to touch something stationary. And there they stand in groups, motionless, and looking for all the world like a grave assembly of horses' heads of the most delicate race, and with noses slightly turned up. Nothing can be more graceful than the way they hold themselves. Their heads are not bigger than those of ordinary-sized chessmen.
As the Vernons had been at Posilippo all through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April, 1872, they were naturally anxious we should see something of the devastation [pg 822] it had occasioned. We determined, therefore, to drive to San Sebastiano, a village which was almost entirely destroyed. As we approached the spot, it seemed as if we were driving into the kingdom of chaos, where “the earth was void and empty.” On either side lay wide plains of gray-black lava, looking as if a dead, unfertile earth had been furrowed with the burning shares of some gigantic and infernal plough, and had remained calcined and sterile for ever after. We left the carriage and climbed up a large mound of lava. I found myself nearly on a level with the low roof of the small church, round which the lava had crept, but had spared it. I looked down into the basement of a house below me. The lava had poured in and filled what once were rooms, but had left the walls and the roof standing. There was part of a street left, the lava having, with seeming caprice, turned off to the left, as it poured down the mountain, just in that spot. Our friends told us that as they used to sit by the hour and watch the progress of the burning stream through glasses, they could see the small white houses, with the fiery flood approaching, when suddenly each house seemed to leap into the air like a lighted straw, and then was seen no more. A cat ran past me, in haste to save her paws. We could not stand still long, for, though more than a year had elapsed, the land was still too hot to be pleasant; and when we reached home, we found our feet were blistered. The poor creatures whose homes have thus perished approach you timidly with bits of lava to sell. They still have a scared look in their faces. But nothing will persuade them to shift their quarters and leave their grand but dangerous neighbor. They are trying to rebuild their village, and are deaf to all the remonstrances of the great scientific philosopher[187] who lives a hermit's life in the observatory half-way up the mountain. He has a Capuchin priest as a companion; and the latter was able to give the last rites of the church to about forty of the unfortunate people, who, actuated by curiosity, had attempted to climb the mountain during the eruption. It seems they had never calculated upon the effect of the burning heat from a distance. They thought if there were a certain space between them and the lava, they should be safe. They forgot that actual contact was not needed; and they were scorched to death long before the stream reached the spot where they stood. Not one of those thus licked up by the breath of the volcano ever recovered, or even lived long enough to quit the place.
Signor Palmier and the Capuchin saw a carriage full of people, coachman and two horses, advancing up the mountain. Suddenly the whole was submerged. They could only tell where it had been arrested by the carrion birds hovering over a certain spot for many days after!
A Discussion With An Infidel.
VIII. Laws Of Nature And Miracles.
Büchner. We differ very widely in many points, sir; but there is one point about which we shall have no difficulty in agreeing—the immutability of natural laws. In fact, you have already conceded that the laws of nature are unchangeable.