Chapter XXVI: The Ascent of Vesuvius

November 1st.

Our excursion to Vesuvius was delayed for some days to await the arrival of the Franklin, which was to bring us the lieutenant who was our travelling companion in Germany last summer, and who wished to make the ascent in our company. At length, on Thursday, the firing of heavy guns told us that the great ship was coming into the harbor, and we were soon on board, where we received a most hearty welcome, not only from our kinsman, but from all the officers. The Franklin is the Flag-ship of our European squadron, and bears the flag of Admiral John L. Worden, the gallant officer whose courage and skill in fighting the Monitor against the Merrimack in Hampton Roads in 1862, saved the country in an hour of imminent peril. Well do we remember the terror in New York caused by the tidings of the sinking of the Congress and the Cumberland by that first ironclad--a new sea monster whose powers of destruction were unknown, and which we expected to see within a week sailing up our harbor, and demanding the surrender of the city. From this and other dangers, which we shudder to contemplate, we were saved by the little Monitor on that eventful day. As Admiral Worden commands only the _fleet_, the _ship_ is commanded by an officer who bears the same honored name as the ship itself--Captain Franklin. We were very proud to see such men, surrounded by a fine set of officers, representing our country here. As we made frequent visits to the ship, we came to feel quite at home there. Not the least pleasant part of these visits was to meet several American ladies--the wife and daughters of Admiral Worden, and the wife of Captain Franklin. Men who have rendered distinguished services to their country are certainly entitled to a little domestic comfort on their long voyages; while the presence of such ladies is a benefit to all on board. When men are alone, whether in camp or on a ship, they are apt to become a little rough, and the mere presence of a noble woman has a refining influence over them. I can see it here in these young officers, who all seem to have a chivalrous feeling towards these ladies, who remind them of their own mothers and sisters at home. A more happy family I have not met on land or sea.

To their company we are indebted for much of the pleasure of our excursion to Vesuvius. On Saturday a large party was made up from the ship, which included the family of Admiral Worden, Captain and Mrs. Franklin, and half a dozen lieutenants. Our excellent consul at Naples, Mr. Duncan, and his sister, were also with us. We filled four carriages, and away we went through the streets of Naples at a furious rate; sweeping around the bay (along which, as we looked through arched passages to the right, we could see villas and gardens stretching down to the waters), till we reached Resina, which stands on the site of buried Herculaneum. Here we turned to the left, and began the ascent. And now we found it well that our drivers had harnessed three stout horses abreast to each carriage, as we had a hard climb upward along the blackened sides of the mountain.

We soon perceived the wide-spread ruin wrought by successive eruptions of the volcano. Over all this mountain side had rolled a deluge of fire, and on every hand were strewn the wrecks of the mighty desolation. It seemed as if a destroying angel had passed over the earth, blasting wherever his shadow fell. On either side stretched miles and miles of lava, which had flowed here and there slowly and sluggishly like molten iron, turning when interrupted in its course, and twisted into a thousand shapes.

But if this was a terrible sight, there was something to relieve the eye, as we looked away in the distance to where the smile of God still rests on an unsmitten world. As we mounted higher, we commanded a wider view, and surely never was there a more glorious panorama than that which was unrolled at our feet on that October morning. There was the bay of Naples, flashing in the sunlight, with the beautiful islands of Ischia and Capri lying, like guardian fortresses, off its mouth, and ships coming and going to all parts of the Mediterranean. What an image was presented in that one view of the contrasts in our human life between sunshine and shadow--blooming fields on one hand, and a blackened waste on the other; above, a region swept by fire, and below, gardens and vineyards, and cities and villages, smiling in peace and security.

We had left Naples at nine o'clock, but it was noon before we reached the Observatory--a station which the Italian Government has established on the side of the mountain for the purpose of making meteorological observations. This is the limit to which carriages can ascend, and here we rested for an hour. Our watchful lieutenants had thoughtfully provided a substantial lunch, which the steward spread in a little garden overlooking the bay, and there assembled as merry a group of Americans as ever gathered on the sides of Vesuvius.

From the Observatory, those who would spare any unnecessary fatigue may take mules a mile farther to the foot of the cone, but our party preferred the excitement of the walk after our long ride. In ascending the cone, no four-footed beast is of any service; one must depend on his own strong limbs, unless he chooses to accept the aid of some of the fierce looking attendants who offer their services as porters. A lady may take a chair, and for forty francs be carried quite to the top on the shoulders of four stout fellows. But the more common way is to take two assistants, one to go forward who drags you up by a strap attached around his waist, to which you hold fast for dear life, while another _pushes_ behind. Our young lady had _three_ escorts. She drove a handsome team of two ahead, while a third lubberly fellow was trying to make himself useful, or, at least, to earn his money, by putting his hands on her shoulders, and thus urging her forward. I believe I was the only person of the party, except the Consul and one lieutenant, who went up without assistance. I took a man at first, rather to get rid of his importunity, but he gave out sooner than I did, stopping after a few rods to demand more money, whereupon I threw him off in disgust, and made the ascent alone. But I would not recommend others to follow my example, as the fatigue is really very great, especially to one unused to mountain climbing. Not only is the cone very steep, but it is covered with ashes; so that one has no firm hold for his feet, but sinks deep at every step. Thus he makes slow progress, and is soon out of breath. He can only keep on by going _very slowly_. I had to stop every few minutes, and throw myself down in the ashes, to rest. But with these little delays, I kept steadily mounting higher and higher.

As we neared the top, the presence of the volcano became manifest, not merely from the cloud which always hangs about it, but by smoke issuing from many places at the side. It seemed as if the mountain were a vast smouldering heap out of which the internal heat forced its way through every aperture. Here and there a long line of smoke seemed to indicate a subterranean fissure or vein, through which the pent-up fires forced their way. As we crossed these lines of smoke the sulphurous fumes were stifling, especially when the wind blew them in our faces.

But at last all difficulties were conquered, and we stood on the very top, and looked over the awful verge into the crater.

Those who have never seen a volcano are apt to picture it as a tall peak, a slender cone, like a sugar loaf, with a round aperture at the top, like the chimney of a blast furnace, out of which issues fire and smoke. Something of this indeed there is, but the actual scene is vastly greater and grander. For, instead of a small round opening, like the throat of a chimney, large enough for one flaming column, the crater is nearly half a mile across, and many hundreds of feet deep; and one looks down into a yawning gulf, a vast chasm in the mountain, whose rocky sides are yellow with sulphur, and out of which the smoke issues from different places. At times it is impossible to see anything, as dense volumes of smoke roll upward, which the wind drives toward us, so that we are ourselves lost in the cloud. Then they drift away, and for an instant we can see far down into the bowels of the earth.

Standing on the bald head of Vesuvius, one cannot help some grave reflections, looking at what is before him only from the point of view of a man of science. The eruption of a volcano is one of the most awful scenes in nature, and makes one shudder to think of the elements of destruction that are imprisoned in the rocky globe. What desolation has been wrought by Vesuvius alone--how it has thrown up mountains, laid waste fields, and buried cities! What a spectacle has it often presented to the terrified inhabitants of Naples, as it has shot up a column not only of smoke, but of fire! The flames have often risen to the height of a mile above the summit of the mountain, their red blaze lighting up the darkness of the night, and casting a glare over the waters of the bay, while the earth was moaning and trembling, as if in pain and fear.

And the forces that have wrought such destruction are active still. For two thousand years this volcano has been smoking, and yet it is not exhausted. Its fury is still unspent. Far down in the heart of the earth still glow the eternal fires. This may give some idea of the terrific forces that are at work in the interior of the hollow globe, while it suggests at least the possibility of a final catastrophe, which shall prove the destruction of the planet itself.

But if the spectacle be thus suggestive and threatening to the man of science, it speaks still more distinctly to one who has been accustomed to think that a time is coming when "the earth, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat," and who beholds in these ascending flames the prophetic symbol of the Dies Irae--the Day of Doom--that shall at last end the long tragedy of man's existence on the earth.

As I stood on the edge of the crater and looked down into the awful depths below, it seemed as if I beheld a scene such as might have inspired the description of Dante in his Inferno, or of John in the Apocalypse; as if that dread abyss were no unfit symbol of the "lower deep" into which sink lost human souls. That "great gulf" was as the Valley of Hell; its rocky sides, yellow with sulphurous flames--how glistening and slippery they looked!--told of a "lake of fire and brimstone" seething and boiling below; those yawning caverns which were disclosed as the smoke drifted away, were the abodes of despair, and the winds that moaned and shrieked around were the wailings of the lost; while the pillar of cloud which is always rising from beneath, which "ceases not day nor night," was as "the smoke of torment," forever ascending.

He must be a dull preacher who could not find a lesson in that awful scene; or see reflected in it the dangers to which he himself is exposed. Fire is the element of destruction, even more than water. The "cruel, crawling foam" of the sea, that comes creeping towards us to seize and to destroy, is not so treacherous as the flames, darting out like serpents' tongues, that come creeping upward from the abyss, licking the very stones at our feet, and that seem eager to lick up our blood.

The point where we stood projected over the crater. The great eruption three years since had torn away half the cone of the mountain, and now there hung above it a ledge, which seemed ready at any moment to break and fall into the gulf below. As I stood on that "perilous edge," the crumbling verge of the volcano, I seemed to be in the position of a human being exposed to dangers vast and unseen, to powers which blind and smother and destroy. As if Nature would fix this lesson, by an image never to be forgotten, the sun that was declining in the west, suddenly burst out of the cloud, and cast my own shadow on the column of smoke that was rising from below. That shadowy form, standing in the air, now vanishing, and then reappearing with every flash of sunlight, seemed no inapt image of human life, a thing of shadow, floating in a cloud, and hovering over an abyss!

Thus musing, I lingered on the summit to the last, for such was the fascination of the scene that I could not tear myself away, and it was not till all were gone, and I found myself quite alone, that I turned and followed them down the mountain side. The descent is as rapid as the ascent is slow. A few minutes do the work of hours, as one plunges down the ashy cone, and soon our whole party were reassembled at its base. It was five o'clock when we took our carriages at the Observatory; and quite dark before we got down the mountain, so that men with lighted torches (long sticks of pine, like those with which travellers make their way through the darkness of American forests), had to go before us to show the road, and with such flaring flambeaux, and much shouting of men and boys, of guides and drivers, we came rolling down the sides of Vesuvius, and a little after seven o'clock were again rattling through the streets of Naples.

Yesterday was our last day in this city, as we leave this afternoon for Athens and Constantinople, and as it was the Sabbath, we went on board the Franklin for a religious service. Such a service is always very grateful to an American far from home. The deck of an American ship is like a part of his country, a floating island, anchored for the moment to a foreign shore: and as he stands there, and sees around him the faces of countrymen, and hears, instead of the language of strangers, his dear old mother tongue, and looks up and sees floating above him the flag he loves so well--that has been through so many battles and storms--he cannot keep down a trembling in his heart, or the tears from his eyes.

And how delightful it is, on such a spot, and with such a company, to join in religious worship. The Franklin has an excellent chaplain--one who commands the respect of all on board by his consistent life, though without any cant or affectation, while his uniform kindness and sympathy win their hearts. The service was held on the gun-deck, where officers and men were assembled, sitting as they could, between the cannon. The band played one or two sacred airs, and the chaplain read the service with his deep, rich voice, after which it was my privilege to preach to this novel congregation of my countrymen. Altogether the occasion was one of very peculiar interest to me, and I hope it was equally so to others.

And so we took leave of the Franklin, with most grateful memories of the kindness of all, from the Admiral down. It is pleasant to see such a body of officers on board of one of our national ships. None can realize, except those who travel abroad, how much of the good name of our country is entrusted to the keeping of such men. They go everywhere, they appear in every port of Europe and indeed of the world; they are instantly recognized by their uniform, and are regarded, much more than ordinary travellers, as the representatives of our country. How pleasant it is to find them uniformly _gentlemen_--courteous and dignified, preserving their self-respect, while showing proper respect to others. I am proud to see such a generation of young officers coming on the stage, and trust it may always be said of them, that (taking example from the gallant captains and admirals who are now the pride of our American Navy,) they are as modest as they are brave. Such be the men to carry the starry flag around the globe!