Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-05-01

| slightest preparations to belch forth
fire, and ashes, and lava and rock re-
cord themselves here. Hardly a peb-,
BILE cal be thrown up without the story
being told by the needle of that indica-'
tor. Yet all machinery, and the skilled
men who watch it night and day, may.
be swept down the mountain any mo-
ment, should the volcano rouse itself
for one of its most terrible efforts.
Even in the eruption of 1872 the heat
was so intense that the men in the OBJ
servatory found it almost impossible to
breathe. 1t is difficult not to admire
| the American-like recklessness of the
Neapolitan Company that has just
| opened a railway from the observatory
almost to the tip of the volcano; but
unless Vesuvius has been frightened by
this impudence into something like inn
! potence, engine and train and station
house will all probably be, before very
long, some fifty feet under lava.
1t is possible to go with horses die
rectly from the observatory to Pom
pei. This is probably the most inn
pressive way TO approach the exhumed
city. We are descending upon it along
the track the ashes must have taken
when they smothered it on that fearful
day almost two thousand years ago.
But there is no impressive entrance
within the walls Of the city. There is
one lawful way of getting in, and that
is through a restaurant and shop for
the sale of very ordinary curiosities,
and a turn-stile OF the most modern
sort. But one past these there are no
more in~congruities. Then green slop-
ing banks on each side, marking the
depth to which the shroud of ashes
covered the city, led to one of the
arched gateways, under which you en-
ter into a scene which, in spite of all
that innumerable photographs have
done to make you familiar with its
main features, impresses you AS the
most remarkable you have ever looked.
upon. The pavement on which you
tread is worn in hollows and ruts by
footprints and chariotwheels. Ike street
is lined on both sides with houses so
perfectly preserved that q few hours
work would make any of them habit
able. Yet in this great city, through
which you may stroll for miles, no liv-
ing thing has dwelt for twenty centur-
les. No cemetery seems so truly a city
of the dead as this. 1t is bound to the
world of to-day by no ties. Athousand
years and more ago all its relationships
to the human ace were snapped, never
again to be formed. This little spot of
earth was then instantly and forever
cut off by a great catastrophe from all
things terrestrial.
Close by the gateway we turned aside
into a museum where a large number
OF obi ects have been so arranged as to
give the greatest possible assistance to
the imagination in its effort to form
some conception of Pompeii on the day
of its destruction. Bread just as it
came from the oven. with the marks of
the knife and the bakers name stamped
upon it, nuts cracked and ready for the
table, wine solidified in long-necked
bottles, and a hundred other articles of
every sort in daily use now as then, are
kept in these glass cases around the
walls. But far more interesting are
these petritied statue-like bodies in the
middle of the room. Lying in the posi-
ton in which they fall, with hands
clasped in agony, Or pressed over the
eyes to shut out the horrors of the in
describable scene, these human forms
convey q more vivid impression than
anything else in Pompeii of the terrors
which smothered and frightened away
their lives. A few steps brought us to
the Forum, the gathering-place of the
people to discuss commercial, and
political, and social life. Even relig-
ious question must have found fierce
disputants here, for massive temples
rise Oh every side to different gods,
whose worshippers must often have
fingered in the Forum, before ascend
ing the steps to the altar, to argue for
the superiority OF their own divinity
over all others. Passing under a tri-
umphal arch we walked through street
after street where all the houses were
built on the same plan, and seemed to
differ only in size and elegance. Then
out OF another gate we came upon the
tombs where the Pompeiians, like the
Romans along the Appian Way, built
editices for the dead almost as stately
and grand as for the living.
Onour way to the Amphitheater, which
most limits of the present excavations,
we stopped to watch them gradually
u%ucoyerlng Il house chat had evidently
belonged to some rich merchant or
noble. Yet he had not attempted to
introduce airy architectural novelties.
There was the same narrow entrance
into a small court having a fountain in
the center, a room beyond for the re-
ception of ordinary guests, another
court larger and more deliberately dec
GRATED, with a more %pretentious foun-
tain for different sorts OF fish, on one
side q dining room, and sleeping rooms
on all the others, and a second story
for the slaves. The Amphitheater
stands almost as it was on that ''last
day of Pompeii." From one of the
highest rows of its stone seats, with
Vesuvius sending up its cloudo OF smoke
in the distance, with the arena so Of
ten blood-stained beneath, it is almost
impossible not to re-people the scene as
Bulwer did, and to live over, with these
creatures of the Imagination, the clos
ing acts Of that incompatible tragedy.
-Albany Argus.
We have often heard of the won.
derful ~glass-eating dog Carlo, but al.
ways believed it a humbug; but he was
called into the office of tho ArtaSiau