Der Deutsche correspondent. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1841-1918, 1904-02-10
FIERY FLOOD
That Swept Pompeii the Only
Fiji Comparison for Balti-
more's Holocaust.

The vast confagration which wiped
out the heart of the business section of
Baltimore may ~fttingly be compared in
its magnitude with the destruction OF
Pompeii in A. D. 70.
A faint idea of what the burning of
this ancient city was has been given
from time to time in pyrotechnic repre>
sensations by Payne, the fireworks de-
signer. But the magnitude of such a
catastrophe cannot be conveyed by any
artificial representation. Pompeii was
completely wiped off the face of Italy
and buried beneath 20 to so feet of hot
cinders, lava and rock, belched forth
from the mouth of the volcano Vesu>
vius, at whose base the city of Pompeil
was situated. The description of the
scene as narrated by Edward Bulwer
Lytton in his Last Days of Pompeii'
resembles not remotely the incidents of
our own co~nfiagration Sunday night.
We had the pals Of smoke hanging
in mournful clouds above the city, the
flames darting to and fro, enveloping
in their s%erpentine old the tall struc>
lures and the scurrying of great gusts
of clouds for all the world like a snow
storm of fire.
Beginning his description with the
first signs of portraying danger from
the volcano Vesuvius, Lytton con-
tinues:
The clouds, which had scattered so
deep a murkiness over the city had set
tied into a solid and impenetrable mass.
1t resembled less even the thickest
gloom of night in the open air tina the
close n blind darkness of some mar
row room Rnt in nrnnnrtinn az the
blackness gathered did the lightnings
around Vesuvius increase in their vivid
and scorching glare. Nor was their
horrible beauty confined to the usual
hues of fire! no rainbow ever rivaled
their varying and prodigal dyes. Now
brightly blue as the most azure depth of
a southern sky; now of a livid and
snake-like green, darting restlessly to
and fro, as the folds of an enormous
serpent. now of a lurid and intolerable
crimson, gushing forth through the
columns of smoke, far and wide, and
lighting up the whole city from arch to
arch; then suddenly dying into a sickly
paleness like the ghost of their own
life.
In the pauses of the showers you
heard the Tumbling of the earth be-
ilSdlh anu lie S1OdIinB waves Oh inc
tortured sea; or lower still and audible,
but to the watch of intensest fear the
grinding and Kissing murmur of escap>
ing gases through the chasms of the
distant mountain. Sometimes the cloud
appeared to break from it's solid mass,
and by the lightning, to assume quaint
and vast Rimicries of human or of
monster shapes, striding across the
gloom, hurting one upon the other. and
VANISHING SWIFTLY
into the turbulent abyss of shade; so
that to the, eyes and fancies of the af-
frighted people the u~nsubstantial va
pors were as the bodily forms of gigan-
tic foes, the agents of terror and of
death.
h ashes in many places were knee
deep, and the boiling showers which
came from the steaming breath of the
volcano forced their way into the
houses, bearing with them a strong and
suffocating vapor. In some places inn
mense fragments of rock, hurled upon
the house roofs, bore down along the
streets masses of confused ruin, which