Oxford eagle. (Oxford, Lafayette Co., Miss.) 1876-current, 1902-06-05
Tells of His school Day-Used to
Read of Pompeii and HercuIa-
neum-We should he Hap
py and Contented.

sands of years, and the, mystery. is,
why have they not burned to the sur
face long before this. Where does the
heat all go, and where are the escapes
the chimneys-for the smoke and the
ashes and lava? Surely, these few vol
canoes can't discharge it all. The word
volcano, or ~vuleano, as it used to be
called, comes from Vulcan, the god of
fire, and the ancients believed that the
old fellow had his shops and furnaces
down there, and sometimes when he
bursted out through a hole in some
mountain and the melted rock spouted
up and run over the tank and washed
down in the form of lava, which is an
other Latin word and means to wash.
Volcanoesare Vulcan's chimneys, and as
far back as we have history, sacred or
profane, these chimneys have had their
periodic discharges. Some writers be-
lieve that there was one of these not
far from Sodom and Gomorrah, and
those cities were destroyed just like
Pompeii and Herculaneum, or more re-
Gently like ST. Pierre in Martinique.
A few years ago two of my boys took
a sea voyage from New York to Trini-
dad, and stopped at all these little is
lands and historic points. They told
us of Martinique, where the Empress
Josephine was born and lived until she
was Is years old, and whose beautiful
monuments they saw. Unhappy lady!
The world is still weeping for her. They
climbed the heights of this same vol
cano and looked down into its crater,
for it was quiet and peaceful and had
not had an eruption for fifty years.
The island is small, very small, not
quite as large IS Barlow county, but
had a dense and mengrel population
of 100000 people-chiefiy Indians, ne
groes and Chinese. The whites num-
bered less than 10000, of whom only
1900 were French. just think of it.
Our county is about 25 miles square
and is quite thickly settled and has
$4,000 people, while Martinique has
seven times as many and most of them
are negroes. These negroes were all
slaves until 1S4S. They live chiefly on
fruit and anything they can pick up
and steal. My boys amused them
selves throwing dimes into the water
that was from 20 to 80 feet deep and
the little negro boys would plunge in
and dive to the bottom for the money
and always get it.
Then got to Illuminating about Nesu-
vius and Pompeii and Herculaneum. l
used to speak a speech about ancient
Greece and Rome and Thebes, and l
always said Pompyeye and The-bees,
for that was right then, and SO was
Sisero for Cicero, but they have got
new ways now and l don't know where
l am at. Vesuvius has been cutting up
for more than 1000 years. 1t has had
nine bad eruptions, but there are still
waiting them. Its enormous crater is
two miles around and 1000 feet deep,
and the accumulated lava sometimes
raises its brink 500 feet during an erup-
ton.
When Spartacus, the gladiator, was
besieged by the Romans he with his
little army of 70 men took refuge in
that crater, for it was quiet then, and
killed 5000 Romans who attacked them
on its brink. The great orator, Cicero,
had a beautiful villa at its base, but in
the year rs A. d. old Vulcan fired up
his furnace and belched forth fire and
smoke and lava and ashes and buried
those two cities 65 feet deep and
changed the sea shore and the river so
tina their sitescould not be found, and
when found by accidentthey were, two
miles inland. For three centuries ex-
cavations have been going on and of
late with great energy, and the veri-
table homes of the cultured people
have been found filled with ashes and
cinders that have preserved them all
these centuries. These homes and
halls and churches and temples have
been cleaned out and even the paint
ings on the walls have been restored
and the beautiful marble sculpture
cleaned and renewed just as it was
when the awful calamity occurred. The
celebrated sculptured figures of Lao
coon and his sons strangled by a SER
vant was found there in perfect condi-
ton. In some of these beautiful homes
of the wealthy the tables we're set for
a feast and in the temple were found
the gold and silver adornments that
are usual in such places. In the tenn
pie of Juno there were the corpses of
800 people, who had fed there for safe
ty, but Juno vas powerless and they
all persisted just as did the 5000 at ST.
Pierre who fled into the Roman Catho-
lie cathedral.
The fate of all these cities was very
similar, for it was not lava that de-
stroyed them, nor at st. Pierre, but a
shower of cinders and ashes, and these
are preservatives of anything that they
encase.
When we consider all such calamities
a grateful and thoughtful people will
be thankful to our Heavenly Father
that we live in a land remarkably free
from calamity or affection. No volca-
noes hang their threatening peaks over
us or near us, no cyclones visit us. The
noisome pestilence does not visit us
by day or by night. Cadaverous FAM
inc does not darken our households
with its awful distress. but we live in
peace and in plenty and the lines have
fallen unto us in pleasant places.
It is a fitting time nowfor those who
like to read romance that is founded
on fact to take up that good old book
of Bulwer's, 1.-THE Last Days of Pom
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