Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-10-09


carrying trays a-clink with goblets and
a-smoEe with delicacies from paddock
and sea, and moralist musing over the
degradation of the times passes the pref
ligate doing his best to make them
worst. Hark to the CHATTER AMI plan
of the hoofs on the streets paved with
blocks of basalt. See the verdured and
Powered grounds slopin~ into the most
beautiful bay Of all the carth-.he bay
of Naples.
Listen to the rumbling chariots, car
rying convivial occupants to halls of
mirth and masquerade and carousal.
Hear the loud dash of fountains amid
The sculptured water nymphs. Notice
The weird solemn, farreaching hum and
din and roar Of a city at the close of a
SUMNER day. Let Pompeii sleep well
tonight. for it is the last night Of peace
full slunlher before she falls into the
deep slumcar Of many long centuries.
The morning O. the Oath Of August, A.
D. 70, has arrived. and the day rolls on,
and it is 1 O'Clock In the afternoon.
''Look!'' I say to you, Standing on this
wall, as the sister of Pliny said to him,
the Roman essayist and naval command
er, on the day of which I speak, as she
pointed him in the direction in which
point you.
There is a peculiar cloud on the sky;
a spotted cloud, now white, now black.
It 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 gesture, now de-
scribe it. It rises, a great column of
fiery darkness, higher and higher, and
then spreads out like the branches of a
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 avail
anche after avalanche, binding and
scalding ard suffocating, descend north,
south, east and vest, burying deeper
and deeper in mammoth sepulcher, such
as never before or since was opened,
Stable, 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 suffocated of the ashes,
were scalded to death by the heated del
ton in rocks after rocks, crushing in
homes and temples and theaters. No
wonder the sea receded from the beach
as though i'll terror, until much of the
shipping was wrecked, and no wonder
that when they lifted Pliny the elder
from the sailcloth on which he was rest
ing, under the agitations of what he had
seen, he suddenly expired.
For three days the entombment pro-
ceeded. Then the clouds lifted, and the
cursing of that Apollyon of mountains
subsidized. For 1.700 years that city of
Pompeii lay buried and without any
thing to show its place of doom. But
after 1,700 years Of obliteration work
mans spade, digging 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 amphithe-
alter.
EMOTIONS THE SCENE INSPIRES.
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 emotion [ felt
was indescribable for elevation and So
lemnity 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 $50 of those embalmed by
that eruption have been recovered
Mother and child, noble and serf, lner-
chant and beggar, are presentable and
natural after 1 ,7C0 years of burial. That
woman was found clutching her adorn-
ments when the storm of ashes and fire
began, and for 1 200 years she continued
to clutch them.
There at the soldiers barracks are Ga
skeletons Of brave men, who faithfully
stood guard at their post when the tenn
pest of cinderS began, and after l. roc
years were still found standing guard.
There is the form Of gentle womanhood
impressed upon the hardened ashes
Pass along, and here we see the deepru
in the basaltic pavements worn there by
the wheels Of the chariots of the first
century. There, over the doorways and
in the porticoes, are works of art i'm
mortalizing the debauchery of a city,
which, notwithstanding all its splendors,
was vestibule of perdition.
Those cutters ran with the blood of
the gladiators. who were the prizefght-
ers 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
iity except our own. Up this silent street
and down that silent street we wander
al into that window1eSS and POOfieSS