Color at Vesuvius
And Other Impressions of a Week at the Crater
By Corwin Knapp Linson
With pictures by the Author
rom the heights above the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele at Naples there stretches before one a beautiful panorama. Over the housetops
and domes and clamorous streets, tenderly brilliant beneath the azure of the southern sky; over the curving bay; across the stretch of plain and straggling village street; past gardens of vine and fig clustering about the white dots of houses; even unto the very mountain slopes, the view is never obstructed, but runs on and up to the sullen cloud that unceasingly trails its indolent length seaward. At one end of the picture a gay Neapolitan riot of color, at the other gray ash and harsh lava rock, with patches of smoky yellow where sulphur lies, and here and there rich mottlings of lower tones of black and bronze and orange-red.
The Funicular Railway climbs the cone like an immense steel ladder. The upper station is a little shed of a thing, as grimy and black as a coal-breaker, some hundred feet or more from the crater. Its proximity is startlingly suggested by the thundering challenge from above, and also by the intense heat and the numerous fumerole—little holes and fissures underfoot which give out nauseous odors and intense heat.
Pouring from the crater, when I reached the station, were swelling volumes of smoke and white vapor, following upon explosions that sent great stones and fragments of hot lava hundreds of feet into the air, while cinders fell about me like a dry, black rain. It seemed more than ever an impertinence to think of making pictures of so unearthly a spectacle.
All vision and hearing absorbed in what was taking place, I stood, half suffocated at times by the swirling fumes. With a far-away and insistent turbulence, a dull booming came from the depths. The mountain seemed about to be rent in pieces—an impression no doubt due to the reverberations of sound-waves as the noise grew in volume, with a rattling and cracking as from a thousand rifles in succession, and a thunderous clamor as the flying rocks hurtled one against another. The up shot a swift cloud of cinders, lapilli, and lava fragments, turning the blue into a dirty dun through which the sun gleamed luridly. I had placed myself windward, yet I watched the falling rocks with a vigilant eye and some apprehension. I saw heedless visitors escape the hot shot by not five yards, and one great projectile fell near by plowing its way into the earth and lying smoking and half buried. A moment of quiet followed, and then another explosion tore its way upward, pouring forth a coiling black cloud that blotted out the blue sky.
At first there were no stones at all on the south side. On the second night the wind changed, and the next day saw the ground black with them. Where I had worked, a huge piece of lava lay deep in the ash, with a long furrow behind it. It looked like iron slag. Others, striking the outer edge, had rolled don the smooth outer slope of the cone, leaving twisted tracks that wound out of sight.
The highest point on the summit was a projection of lava perforated like an immense composite chimney, continually giving out vapors and heat. All about the largest hole were mineral deposits in a
