The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1893-12-02

of many long centuries. The morning
of the gath of August, A. D., 70, has ar
rived, and the day rolls on, and it is
one o'clock in the afternoon: 'Look!"
say to you, standing on this wall, as
the sister of Pliny said. to him, the
Roman essayist and naval commander,
on the day of which speak. as she
pointed him in the direction in which
point you. There is peculiar cloud
on the sky-a spotted cloud, now
white, now black. 1t is Vesuvius in
awful and unparalleled eruption. Now
the smoke and fire and steam of that
black monster throat rise and spread,
as, by my gester, now describe it.
1t rises, great column of fiery dark
ness, higher and higher, and then
spreads out like the branches of tree
with midnights interwrapped in its
foliage, wider and wider. Now the
sun goes out and showers of pumice
stone and water from furnaces more
than seven times heated, and ashes in
avalanche after avalanche, binding
and scalding and suffocating. descend,
north, south, east and west, burying
deeper and deeper in mammoth sepul-
cher, such as never before or since was
opened. Stabi@, Herculaneum and
Pompeii Ashes ankle deep, girdle
deep, chin deep, ashes overhead. Out
of the houses and temples and theaters
and into the streets and down to
the beach fed many of the
frantic, but others. if not suffo-
Gated of the ashes, were scalded
to death by the heated deluge.
And then came heavier destruction in
rocks after rocks, crushing in homes
and temples and theaters. No wonder
the sea receded from the beach as
though in terror, until much of the
shipping was wrecked, and no wonder
that, when they lifted Pliny, the elder.
from the sail cloth on which he was
resting under the agitations of what
he had seen, he suddenly expired. For
three days the enrolment proceeded.
Then the clouds lifted and the cursing
of that Apollyon of mountains SUBJ
sided. For seventeen hundred years
that city of Pompeii lay buried and
without anything to show its place of
doom. But after seventeen hundred
years of obliteration, a workman's
spade. digging a well, strikes some
antiquities which lead to the exhuma-
ton of the city. Now walk with me
through some of the streets and into
some of the houses and amid the ruins
of Basilica, and temple and amphi-
theater.
From the moment the guide met us
at the gate on entering Pompeii that
day in November, 1889, until he left us
at the gate on our departure, the emo
ton / felt was indescribable for eleva-
ton and solemnity, and sorrow and
awe. Come and see the petrifed bodies
of the dead found in the city, and now
in the museums of Italy. About for
hundred and fifty of those embalmed
by that eruption have been recovered.
Mother and child, noble and serf, mer-
chant and beggar, are presentable and
natural after seventeen hundred years
of burial. That woman was found
clutching her adornments when the
storm of ashes and fire began, and
for seventeen hundred years she con-
tinued to clutch them. There at the
soldiers barracks are sixty-four skele-
tons of brave men, who faithfully stood
guard at their post when the tie mptest
of cinders began, and after seventeen
hundred years were still found stand
ing guard. There is the form of gentle
womanhood impressed upon the hard
ened ashes. Pass along and here we
see the deep ruts in the basaltic pave
ments worn there by the wheels of the
chariots of the first century. There,
over the doorways and in the porticos,
are works of art immortalizing the de-
bauchery of a city. which notwith-
standing all its splendors. was vesti-
bule of perdition. Those cutters ran
with the blood of the gladiators who
were the prize fighters of those ancient
times, and it was sword parrying
sword, until, with one skillful and
stout plunge of the sharp edge, the
mauled and gashed combatant reeled
over dead, to be carried out amid the
huzzas of enraptured spectators. We
staid among those suggestive scenes
after the hour that visitors are usually
allowed there, and staid until there
was not football to be heard within
all that city, except our own. Up this
silent street and down that silent street
we wandered. Into that windowless
and roofess home we went and came
out again on the pavements that, now
forsaken. We're once thronged with
life.
And can it be that all up and down
tn csc solemn solitudes, hearts, more
than eighteen hundred years ago,
ached and rejoiced, and feet shufied
with the gait of old age or danced
with childish glee. and overtasked
workmen carried their burdens, and
drunkards staggered? On that mosaic
fiber did glowing youth clasp hands in
marriage vow, and across that thresh-
old did pallbearers carry the beloved
dead, and gay groups once mount those
now skeletons of staircrses? While
1 walked and contemplated the city
seemed suddenly to be thronged with
all the population that had ever in
habited it, and l heard its laughter
and groan and blasphemy and un-
cleanliness, and internal boast, as it
was on the Esd of August, 70. And
Vesuvius, from the mild light with
which it flushed the sky that summer
evening as stood in disentombed Pom
peii,. seemed suddenly again to heave
and fame and rock with the lava and
darkness and deso1afiOu and xvon with