By Friday, April 13th, the eruption was practically
at an end. Vesuvius had spent itself in the enormous
convulsion of the 7th and 8th and the subsequent minor
explosions and had returned to its normal state, ceasing
to give any signs of life, except the cloud of smoke
which still rose from its crater and spread like a
thick curtain over and around the mountain. Looked
at from Naples, there was none of the familiar aspects
of the volcano, with its output of smoke and ashes
by day and fiery gleam by night. Now it lay buried
in darkness and obscurity, clothed in a dense pall
of smoke. At Rome there was sunshine, but twenty
miles south hung a misty veil, and twenty-five miles
above Naples a zone of semi-obscurity began, blotting
out the sun, whose light trickled through with a sickly
glare. Everything was whitened with powdery dust;
pretty white villas were daubed and dripping with
mud, and people were busy shoveling the ashes from
their roofs.
The crowds at the stations resembled millers, their
clothes flour covered; the Campania presented the
appearance of a Dakota prairie after a blizzard of
snow, though everything was gray instead of white.
The ashes lay in drifts knee deep. As the volcano
was approached semi-night replaced the day, the gloom
being so deep that telegraph poles twenty feet away
could not be seen. Breathing was difficult, and
the smoke made the eyes water. At Naples, however,
a favorable wind had cleared the air of smoke, the
sun shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy
once more. The goggles and eye-screens had disappeared,
but the streets were anything but comfortable, for
some six thousand men were at work clearing the ashes
from the roofs and main streets and piling them in
the middle of the narrow streets, making the passage
of vehicles very difficult and the sidewalks far from
comfortable for foot passengers.
But while brightness and joy reigned at Naples, there
were gruesome scenes within the volcanic zone.
At Bosco Trecase soldiers carried on the work of exhumation,
being able to work only an hour at a time on account
of the advanced stage of decomposition of the bodies.
Many of these were shapeless, unrecognizable masses
of flesh and bones, while others were little disfigured.
To lessen the danger of an epidemic the bodies were
buried as quickly as possible in quicklime.
On Sunday, the 15th, the searchers at Ottejano were
surprised at finding two aged women still alive, after
six days’ entombment in the ruins. They
were among those who had been buried by the falling
walls a week before. The rafters of the house
had protected them, and a few morsels of food in their
pockets aided to keep them alive. At some points
there the ashes were ten feet deep. At San Giuseppe
bodies of women were found in whose hands were coins
and jewels, and one woman held a jewelled rosary.
This recalls the results of exploration at Herculaneum
and Pompeii, where were similar instances of death
overtaking the victims of the volcano while fleeing
with their jewels in their hands.
