was treacherously soft, with its coating of shifty ash on the ledge of lava overhanging the gulf; so, cautiously braced and bending forward less than a yard from the edge, I got a glimpse of the depths. The muffled muttering was the more impressive because impossible to measure or define. This clamor of unseen forces taps one’s nerves. I could mark the discolored sides of the crater dropping in precipitous incline, seamy, cracked, steaming at points with jets as from escape-valves. I did not linger where at any moment a violent explosion might cause the overhang to slip, as I afterward saw happen. I experienced a thrill, indeed, when, during a visit to Naples in the following year, I learned that the whole ledge upon which I had worked had disappeared within a fortnight of that time.
Half-tone plate engraved by Walter Aikman
Sunset view of Vesuvius in January, showing old and new lava
The ash cone lies like a monster ant-heap on the broad shoulders of the mountain. The streams of lava ooze from holes, slowly following their various courses, congealing soon into weird and curious shapes. Two nights, with my guide, I clambered over the rough and tortuous surface, our torches flaring out into the darkness upon great masses that held a certain grandeur in their silhouettes. Up and down, in and out, carefully feeling for places for our feet, or sometimes making good way over some old and hardened stream, we proceeded, the lava cracking all about us with the contraction of cooling, the under surface still glowing in the crevices. Once there came a sharp report as the top broke open a few feet away, revealing the vivid seam of fire. We soon reached the fresh lava, moving in resistless flow. It was about two yards across, and as flat as a river where it issued at white heat. Farther on it darkened in color, and began to tumble and break and to pile up into ridges and cable-like coils. Beyond this was another stream that came from an opening some ten feet above and formed a cascade of fire. The heat was intense. Issuing thus in molten state, white hot or glowing against the blackness of the night, its light diffused by the rising steam, revealing the uncanny shapes in stone all about, this night view of flowing lava is surely most impressive. There were streams of fire
every few yards, and the heat drove us back more than once when the shifting
