Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1874 — At Vesuvius. [ARTICLE]

At Vesuvius.

Charles Warren Stoddard, writing to the San Francisco Chronicle of the crater of Vesuvius, says: “We all stuffed our handkerchiefs into our mouths, held our noses and stepped up on to the narrow path that is trodden on the very rim of the cone. On one side was a yawning chasm so filled with vapors that I saw nothing; on the other was the precipitous slope of the mountain, down which -it was easy to cast one’s self and slide for two or three hundred feet without much effort. In a few moments we had passed the fiery or smoky ordeal, and, coming around the windward side of the cone we breathed once more the delicious air of the morning. We could now approach the crater with ease and look far down into its hideous—nay, its beautiful —depths. It is very beautiful. The inner walls are thickly coated with sulphur, and a Pompeiian fresco is not more brilliant or harmonious than the rich and splendid greens and reds and yellow's that there combine to decorate this temple of the furies. Sudden puffs of wind sometimes wafted the great clouds that were continually ascending from the pit high over our heads, and, the sun charging the sulphurous steams with light, a ghastly gloom was thrown for a moment over everything. We heard the commotion of the elements beneath us; it was as though the pit were half filled with fat, frying and sizzling; the air was heavily charged with.sulphurous gases; we felt the heat of the very ground we stood on through the soles of our boots; in many places we could not touch our hand to the rocks without blistering it. Close by w r as a hole in the side, a jutting point of lava, into which one of the guides introduced, without the aid of his staff, a large roll of paper, w’hich no sooner touched the spot than it burst into flame; the end of his stick ignited in a few seconds, yet no flames issued from the flerv furnace. The boy brought me a small bit of lava, at which I lighted my cigar.”