We left Naples in a calèche yesterday after breakfast and drove to Portici. Portici, Resina, and Torre del Greco are beautiful little towns on the sea-shore of the bay of Naples or rather they may be termed a continuation of the city, as they are close together in succession, and the interval filled up with villas. The distance from the gates of Naples to Portici is three miles. The road runs through the court yard of the Royal Palace at Portici which has a large archway at its entrance and sortie. We proceeded to Resina and alighted in order to descend under ground to Herculaneum, Resina being built on the spot where Herculaneum stood. There are always guides on this road on the look out for travellers; one addressed us, and conducted us to a house where we alighted and entered. Our guide then prepared a flambeau, and having unlocked and lifted up a trap door invited us to descend. A winding rampe under ground leads to Herculaneum. We discovered a large theatre with its proscenium, seats, corridors, vomitories, etc., and we were enabled, having two lighted torches with us, to read the inscriptions. Some statues that were found here have been removed to the Museum at Portici. This is the only part of Herculaneum that has been excavated; for if any further excavations were attempted, the whole town of Resina, which is built over it, would fall in. Herculaneum no doubt contains many things of value, but it would be rather too desperate a stake to expose the town of Resina to certain ruin, for the sake of what might be found. At Pompeii the case is very different, there being nothing built over its site.
After having satisfied our curiosity here, we regained the light of heaven in Resina, and proceeded to Pompeii, which is seven miles further, the total distance from Naples to Pompeii being ten miles. The part of Pompeii already discovered looks like a town with the houses unroofed situated in a deep gravel or sand pit, the depth of which is considerably greater than the height of the buildings standing in it. You descend into it from the brink, which is on a level with the rest of the country; Pompeii is consequently exposed to the open air, and you have neither to go under ground, nor to use flambeaux as at Herculaneum, but simply to descend as into a pit. There is always a guard stationed at Pompeii to protect the place from delapidation and thefts of antiquarians. From its resembling, as I have already said, a town in the centre of a deep gravel pit, you come upon it abruptly and on looking down you are surprized to see a city newly brought to day. The streets and houses here remain entire, the roofs of the houses excepted, which fell in by the effect of the excavation; so that you here behold a Roman city nearly in the exact state it was hi when it was buried under the ashes of Vesuvius, during its first eruption in the year 79 of the Christian era. It does not appear to me that the catastrophe of Pompeii could have been occasioned by an earthquake, for if so the streets and houses would not be found upright and entire: it appears rather to have been caused by the showers of ashes and écroulement of the mountain, which covered it up and buried it for ever from the sight of day. The first place our guide took us to see was a superb Amphitheatre about half as large as the Coliseum: the arena and seats are perfect, and all the interior is perfectly cleared out: so are the dens where the wild beasts were kept; so that you look down into this amphitheatre as into a vast basin standing on its brink, which is on a level with the rest of the ground around it, and by means of the seats and passages you may descend into the arena. This Amphitheatre is at a short distance from the rest of the town. What is at present discovered of this city consists of a long street with several off-sets of streets issuing from it: a temple, two theatres, a praetorium, a large barrack, and a peculiarly large house or villa belonging probably to some eminent person, but no doubt when the excavation shall be recommenced many more streets will be discovered, as from the circumstance of there being an amphitheatre, two other theatres and a number of sepulchral monuments outside the gates, it must have been a city of great consequence. Most of the houses seem to have had two stories; the roofs fell in of course by the act of excavation, but the columns remain entire. I observe that the general style of building in Pompeii in most of the houses is as follows: that in each building there is a court yard in the centre, something like the court yard of a convent, which is sometimes paved in mosaic, and generally surrounded by columns; in the middle of this court is a fountain or basin: the court has no roof and the wings of the house form a quadrangle environing it. The windows and doors of the rooms are made in the interior sides of the quadrangle looking into the court yard; on the exterior there appears to be only a small latticed window near the top of the room to admit light. I have seen in Egypt and in India similarly built houses, and it is the general style of building in Andalusia and Barbary. In the rooms are niches in the walls for lamps, precisely in the style of the Moorish buildings in India.
In many of the chambers of the houses at Pompeii are paintings al fresco and arabesques on the walls which on being washed with water appear perfectly fresh. The subjects of these paintings are generally from the mythology. In some of the rooms are paintings al fresco of fish, flesh, fowl and fruit; in others Venus and the Graces at their toilette, from which we may infer that the former were dining rooms and the latter boudoirs. A large villa (so I deem it as it stands without the gates) has a number of rooms, two stories entire and three court yards with fountains, many beautiful fresco paintings on the walls of the chambers. Annexed to this villa is a garden arranged in terraces and a fish pond. A covered gallery supported by pillars on one of the sides of the garden served probably as a promenade in wet weather. In the cellars of this villa are a number of amphorae with narrow necks. Had the ancients used corks instead of oil to stop their amphorae, wine eighteen hundred years old might have been found here. It is not the custom even of the modern Italians to use corks for the wine they keep for their own use: a spoonful of oil is poured on the top of the wine in the flask and when they mean to drink it they extract the oil by means of a lump of cotton fastened to a stick or long pin which enters the neck of the flask and absorbs and extracts the oil.
Among the buildings discovered in Pompeii is a large Temple of Isis; here you behold the altar and the pillar to which the beasts of sacrifice were fastened. In this temple at the time of the first excavation were found all the instruments of sacrifice and other things appertaining to the worship of that Goddess. These and other valuables such as statues, coins, utensils of all sorts were removed to Portici, where they are now to be seen in the Museum of that place. The Praetorium at Pompeii is the next remarkable thing; it is a vast enclosure: a great number of columns are standing upright here and the most of them entire; the steps forming the ascent to the elevated seat where the Praetor usually sat, remain entire. There is a large building and court yard near one of the gates of the city supposed to have been a barrack for soldiers; three skeletons were found here with their legs in a machine similar to our stocks. The scribbling and caricatures on the walls of this barrack are perfectly visible and legible. When one wanders thro' the streets of this singularly interesting city, one is tempted to think that the inhabitants have just walked out. What a dreadful lingering death must have befallen these inhabitants who could not escape from Pompeii at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius which covered it with ashes. The air could only be exhausted by degrees, so that a prolonged suffocation or a death by hunger must have been their lot.
Four skeletons were found upright in the streets, having in their hands boxes containing jewellery and things of value, as if in the act of endeavouring to make their escape: these must soon have perished, but the skeleton of a woman found in one of the rooms of the houses close to a bath shews that her death must have been one of prolonged suffering.
What a fine subject Pompeii would furnish for the pen of a Byron! As I have before remarked, all the valuables and utensils of all sorts found here have been removed to Portici; it is a great pity that everything could not be left in Pompeii in the exact situation in which it was found on its first discovery at the excavation. What a light it would have thrown (which no description can give) on the melancholy catastrophe as well as on the private life and manners of the ancients! But if they had been left here, they would, even tho' a guard of soldiers were stationed here to protect them, have been by degrees all stolen.
There were some magnificent tombs just outside the gates which must have been no small ornament to the city.
We returned to Resina to dinner at six o'clock.
We had made an arrangement with one of the guides of Vesuvius called Salvatore that he should be ready for us at Resina at seven o'clock with a mule and driver for each of us to ascend the mountain, and we found him very punctual at the door of the inn at that hour. The terms of the journey were as follows. One scudo for Salvatore and one scudo for each mule and driver for which they were to forward us to the mountain, remain the whole night and reconduct us to Resina the following morning. The object in ascending at night and remaining until morning is to combine the night view of the eruption with the visit (if possible) to the crater, which cannot with safety be undertaken by night, and to enjoy likewise the noble view at sunrise of the whole bay and city of Naples and the adjacent islands. We started therefore at a quarter past seven and arrived at half past nine at a small house and chapel, called the hermitage of Vesuvius, which is generally considered as half-way up the mountain. In this house dwells an old ecclesiastic who receives travellers and furnishes them with a couch and frugal repast. We dismounted here and our worthy host provided us with some mortadella and an omelette; and we did not fail to do justice to his excellent lacrima Christi, of which he has always a large provision. We then betook ourselves to rest, leaving orders to be awakened at two o'clock in order to proceed further up the mountain. There was a pretty decent eruption of the mountain, which vomited fire, stones and ashes at an interval of twenty-five minutes, so that we enjoyed this spectacle during our ascent. A violent noise, like thunder, accompanies each eruption, which increases the awefulness and grandeur of the sight. At two o'clock our guide and muleteers being very punctual, we bade adieu to the hermit, promising him to come to breakfast with him the next morning; we then mounted our mules and after an hour's march arrived at the spot where the ashes and cinders, combined with the steepness of the mountain, prevent the possibility of going any further except on foot. We dismounted therefore at this place, and sent back our mules to the hermitage to wait for us there. We now began to climb among the ashes, and tho' the ascent to the position of the ancient crater is not more than probably eighty yards in height, we were at least one hour before we reached it, from its excessive steepness and from gliding back two feet out of three at every step we made. We at length reached the old crater and sat ourselves down to repose till day-break. Tho' it was exceeding cold, the exhalation from the veins of fire and hot ashes kept us as warm as we could wish: for here every step is literally
per ignes Suppositos cineri doloso.[97]