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Saunterings, a non-fiction book by Charles Dudley Warner |
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Vesuvius - Climbing A Volcano |
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_ Everybody who comes to Naples,--that is, everybody except the lady who fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured her shoulder, as she was mounting for the ascent,--everybody, I say, goes up Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impressions and descriptions of the performance. If you believe the tales of travelers, it is an undertaking of great hazard, an experience of frightful emotions. How unsafe it is, especially for ladies, I heard twenty times in Naples before I had been there a day. Why, there was a lady thrown from her horse and nearly killed, only a week ago; and she still lay ill at the next hotel, a witness of the truth of the story. I imagined her plunged down a precipice of lava, or pitched over the lip of the crater, and only rescued by the devotion of a gallant guide, who threatened to let go of her if she didn't pay him twenty francs instantly. This story, which will live and grow for years in this region, a waxing and never-waning peril of the volcano, I found, subsequently, had the foundation I have mentioned above. The lady did go to Resina in order to make the ascent of Vesuvius, mounted a horse there, fell off, being utterly unhorsewomanly, and hurt herself; but her injury had no more to do with Vesuvius than it had with the entrance of Victor Emanuel into Naples, which took place a couple of weeks after. Well, as I was saying, it is the fashion to write descriptions of Vesuvius; and you might as well have mine, which I shall give to you in rough outline. There came a day when the Tramontane ceased to blow down on us the cold air of the snowy Apennines, and the white cap of Vesuvius, which is, by the way, worn generally like the caps of the Neapolitans, drifted inland instead of toward the sea. Warmer weather had come to make the bright sunshine no longer a mockery. For some days I had been getting the gauge of the mountain. With its white plume it is a constant quantity in the landscape: one sees it from every point of view; and we had been scarcely anywhere that volcanic remains, or signs of such action,--a thin crust shaking under our feet, as at Solfatara, where blasts of sulphurous steam drove in our faces,--did not remind us that the whole ground is uncertain, and undermined by the subterranean fires that have Vesuvius for a chimney. All the coast of the bay, within recent historic periods, in different spots at different times, has risen and sunk and risen again, in simple obedience to the pulsations of the great fiery monster below. It puffs up or sinks, like the crust of a baking apple-pie. This region is evidently not done; and I think it not unlikely it may have to be turned over again before it is. We had seen where Herculaneum lies under the lava and under the town of Resina; we had walked those clean and narrow streets of Pompeii, and seen the workmen picking away at the imbedded gravel, sand, and ashes which still cover nearly two thirds of the nice little, tight little Roman city; we had looked at the black gashes on the mountain-sides, where the lava streams had gushed and rolled and twisted over vineyards and villas and villages; and we decided to take a nearer look at the immediate cause of all this abnormal state of things. In the morning when I awoke the sun was just rising behind Vesuvius; and there was a mighty display of gold and crimson in that quarter, as if the curtain was about to be lifted on a grand performance, say a ballet at San Carlo, which is the only thing the Neapolitans think worth looking at. Straight up in the air, out of the mountain, rose a white pillar, spreading out at the top like a palm-tree, or, to compare it to something I have seen, to the Italian pines, that come so picturesquely into all these Naples pictures. If you will believe me, that pillar of steam was like a column of fire, from the sun shining on and through it, and perhaps from the reflection of the background of crimson clouds and blue and gold sky, spread out there and hung there in royal and extravagant profusion, to make a highway and a regal gateway, through which I could just then see coming the horses and the chariot of a southern perfect day. They said that the tree-shaped cloud was the sign of an eruption; but the hotel-keepers here are always predicting that. The eruption is usually about two or three weeks distant; and the hotel proprietors get this information from experienced guides, who observe the action of the water in the wells; so that there can be no mistake about it. We took carriages at nine o'clock to Resina, a drive of four miles, and one of exceeding interest, if you wish to see Naples life. The way is round the curving bay by the sea; but so continuously built up is it, and so inclosed with high walls of villas, through the open gates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem never to leave the city. The streets and quays swarm with the most vociferous, dirty, multitudinous life. It is a drive through Rag Fair. The tall, whitey-yellow houses fronting the water, six, seven, eight stories high, are full as beehives; people are at all the open windows; garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust out; up every narrow, gloomy, ascending street are crowds of struggling human shapes; and you see how like herrings in a box are packed the over half a million people of Naples. In front of the houses are the markets in the open air,--fish, vegetables, carts of oranges; in the sun sit women spinning from distaffs or weaving fishing-nets; and rows of children who were never washed and never clothed but once, and whose garments have nearly wasted away; beggars, fishermen in red caps, sailors, priests, donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians, carriages, carts, two-wheeled break-down vehicles,--the whole tangled in one wild roar and rush and babel,--a shifting, varied panorama of color, rags,--a pandemonium such as the world cannot show elsewhere, that is what one sees on the road to Resina. The drivers all drive in the streets here as if they held a commission from the devil, cracking their whips, shouting to their horses, and dashing into the thickest tangle with entire recklessness. They have one cry, used alike for getting more speed out of their horses or for checking them, or in warning to the endangered crowds on foot. It is an exclamatory grunt, which may be partially expressed by the letters "a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, mule-driver, "coachee," or cattle-driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could do it to disagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this throng in the streets I like to select the meek, patient, diminutive little donkeys, with enormous panniers that almost hide them. One would have a woman seated on top, with a child in one pannier and cabbages in the other; another, with an immense stock of market-greens on his back, or big baskets of oranges, or with a row of wine-casks and a man seated behind, adhering, by some unknown law of adhesion, to the sloping tail. Then there was the cart drawn by one diminutive donkey, or by an ox, or by an ox and a donkey, or by a donkey and horse abreast, never by any possibility a matched team. And, funniest of all, was the high, two-wheeled caleche, with one seat, and top thrown back, with long thills and poor horse. Upon this vehicle were piled, Heaven knows how, behind, before, on the thills, and underneath the high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as many as eighteen people, men, women, and children,--all in flaunting rags, with a colored scarf here and there, or a gay petticoat, or a scarlet cap,--perhaps a priest, with broad black hat, in the center,--driving along like a comet, the poor horse in a gallop, the bells on his ornamented saddle merrily jingling, and the whole load in a roar of merriment. But we shall never get to Vesuvius at this rate. I will not even stop to examine the macaroni manufactories on the road. The long strips of it were hung out on poles to dry in the streets, and to get a rich color from the dirt and dust, to say nothing of its contact with the filthy people who were making it. I am very fond of macaroni. At Resina we take horses for the ascent. We had sent ahead for a guide and horses for our party of ten; but we found besides, I should think, pretty nearly the entire population of the locality awaiting us, not to count the importunate beggars, the hags, male and female, and the ordinary loafers of the place. We were besieged to take this and that horse or mule, to buy walking-sticks for the climb, to purchase lava cut into charms, and veritable ancient coins, and dug-up cameos, all manufactured for the demand. One wanted to hold the horse, or to lead it, to carry a shawl, or to show the way. In the midst of infinite clamor and noise, we at last got mounted, and, turning into a narrow lane between high walls, began the ascent, our cavalcade attended by a procession of rags and wretchedness up through the village. Some of them fell off as we rose among the vineyards, and they found us proof against begging; but several accompanied us all day, hoping that, in some unguarded moment, they could do us some slight service, and so establish a claim on us. Among these I noticed some stout fellows with short ropes, with which they intended to assist us up the steeps. If I looked away an instant, some urchin would seize my horse's bridle; and when I carelessly let my stick fall on his hand, in token for him to let go, he would fall back with an injured look, and grasp the tail, from which I could only loosen him by swinging my staff and preparing to break his head. The ascent is easy at first between walls and the vineyards which produce the celebrated Lachryma Christi. After a half hour we reached and began to cross the lava of 1858, and the wild desolation and gloom of the mountain began to strike us. One is here conscious of the titanic forces at work. Sometimes it is as if a giant had ploughed the ground, and left the furrows without harrowing them to harden into black and brown stone. We could see again how the broad stream, flowing down, squeezed and squashed like mud, had taken all fantastic shapes,--now like gnarled tree roots; now like serpents in a coil; here the human form, or a part of it,--a torso or a limb,--in agony; now in other nameless convolutions and contortions, as if heaved up and twisted in fiery pain and suffering,--for there was almost a human feeling in it; and again not unlike stone billows. We could see how the cooling crust had been lifted and split and turned over by the hot stream underneath, which, continually oozing from the rent of the eruption, bore it down and pressed it upward. Even so low as the point where we crossed the lava of 1858 were fissures whence came hot air. An hour brought us to the resting-place called the Hermitage, an osteria and observatory established by the government. Standing upon the end of a spur, it seems to be safe from the lava, whose course has always been on either side; but it must be an uncomfortable place in a shower of stones and ashes. We rode half an hour longer on horseback, on a nearly level path, to the foot of the steep ascent, the base of the great crater. This ride gave us completely the wide and ghastly desolation of the mountain, the ruin that the lava has wrought upon slopes that were once green with vine and olive, and busy with the hum of life. This black, contorted desert waste is more sterile and hopeless than any mountain of stone, because the idea of relentless destruction is involved here. This great hummocked, sloping plain, ridged and seamed, was all about us, without cheer or relaxation of grim solitude. Before us rose, as black and bare, what the guides call the mountain, and which used to be the crater. Up one side is worked in the lava a zigzag path, steep, but not very fatiguing, if you take it slowly. Two thirds of the way up, I saw specks of people climbing. Beyond it rose the cone of ashes, out of which the great cloud of sulphurous smoke rises and rolls night and day now. On the very edge of that, on the lip of it, where the smoke rose, I also saw human shapes; and it seemed as if they stood on the brink of Tartarus and in momently imminent peril. We left our horses in a wild spot, where scorched boulders had fallen upon the lava bed; and guides and boys gathered about us like cormorants: but, declining their offers to pull us up, we began the ascent, which took about three quarters of an hour. We were then on the summit, which is, after all, not a summit at all, but an uneven waste, sloping away from the Cone in the center. This sloping lava waste was full of little cracks,--not fissures with hot lava in them, or anything of the sort,--out of which white steam issued, not unlike the smoke from a great patch of burned timber; and the wind blew it along the ground towards us. It was cool, for the sun was hidden by light clouds, but not cold. The ground under foot was slightly warm. I had expected to feel some dread, or shrinking, or at least some sense of insecurity, but I did not the slightest, then or afterwards; and I think mine is the usual experience. I had no more sense of danger on the edge of the crater than I had in the streets of Naples. We next addressed ourselves to the Cone, which is a loose hill of ashes and sand,--a natural slope, I should say, of about one and a half to one, offering no foothold. The climb is very fatiguing, because you sink in to the ankles, and slide back at every step; but it is short,--we were up in six to eight minutes,--though the ladies, who had been helped a little by the guides, were nearly exhausted, and sank down on the very edge of the crater, with their backs to the smoke. What did we see? What would you see if you looked into a steam boiler? We stood on the ashy edge of the crater, the sharp edge sloping one way down the mountain, and the other into the bowels, whence the thick, stifling smoke rose. We rolled stones down, and heard them rumbling for half a minute. The diameter of the crater on the brink of which we stood was said to be an eighth of a mile; but the whole was completely filled with vapor. The edge where we stood was quite warm. We ate some rolls we had brought in our pockets, and some of the party tried a bottle of the wine that one of the cormorants had brought up, but found it anything but the Lachryma Christi it was named. We looked with longing eyes down into the vapor-boiling caldron; we looked at the wide and lovely view of land and sea; we tried to realize our awful situation, munched our dry bread, and laughed at the monstrous demands of the vagabonds about us for money, and then turned and went down quicker than we came up. We had chosen to ascend to the old crater rather than to the new one of the recent eruption on the side of the mountain, where there is nothing to be seen. When we reached the bottom of the Cone, our guide led us to the north side, and into a region that did begin to look like business. The wind drove all the smoke round there, and we were half stifled with sulphur fumes to begin with. Then the whole ground was discolored red and yellow, and with many more gay and sulphur-suggesting colors. And it actually had deep fissures in it, over which we stepped and among which we went, out of which came blasts of hot, horrid vapor, with a roaring as if we were in the midst of furnaces. And if we came near the cracks the heat was powerful in our faces, and if we thrust our sticks down them they were instantly burned; and the guides cooked eggs; and the crust was thin, and very hot to our boots; and half the time we couldn't see anything; and we would rush away where the vapor was not so thick, and, with handkerchiefs to our mouths, rush in again to get the full effect. After we came out again into better air, it was as if we had been through the burning, fiery furnace, and had the smell of it on our garments. And, indeed, the sulphur had changed to red certain of our clothes, and noticeably my pantaloons and the black velvet cap of one of the ladies; and it was some days before they recovered their color. But, as I say, there was no sense of danger in the adventure. We descended by a different route, on the south side of the mountain, to our horses, and made a lark of it. We went down an ash slope, very steep, where we sank in a foot or little less at every step, and there was nothing to do for it, but to run and jump. We took steps as long as if we had worn seven-league boots. When the whole party got in motion, the entire slope seemed to slide a little with us, and there appeared some danger of an avalanche. But we did n't stop for it. It was exactly like plunging down a steep hillside that is covered thickly with light, soft snow. There was a gray-haired gentleman with us, with a good deal of the boy in him, who thought it great fun. I have said little about the view; but I might have written about nothing else, both in the ascent and descent. Naples, and all the villages which rim the bay with white, the gracefully curving arms that go out to sea, and do not quite clasp rocky Capri, which lies at the entrance, made the outline of a picture of surpassing loveliness. But as we came down, there was a sight that I am sure was unique. As one in a balloon sees the earth concave beneath, so now, from where we stood, it seemed to rise, not fall, to the sea, and all the white villages were raised to the clouds; and by the peculiar light, the sea looked exactly like sky, and the little boats on it seemed to float, like balloons in the air. The illusion was perfect. As the day waned, a heavy cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light that the waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind Posilipo in a perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was violet. Only it still was not the sea at all; but the little chopping waves looked like flecked clouds; and it was exactly as if one of the violet, cloud-beautified skies that we see at home over some sunsets had fallen to the ground. And the slant white sails and the black specks of boats on it hung in the sky, and were as unsubstantial as the whole pageant. Capri alone was dark and solid. And as we descended and a high wall hid it, a little handsome rascal, who had attended me for an hour, now at the head and now at the tail of my pony, recalled me to the realities by the request that I should give him a franc. For what? For carrying signor's coat up the mountain. I rewarded the little liar with a German copper. I had carried my own overcoat all day. _ |
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