perfumes, of secret charms, as if beneath the veil of the gentle darkness were hid many sweet secrets. The old experience occurred to me, that Italy gives us northerners a piece of the magical charms and perils of the Tropics. Nature here comes so cordially near us, yet in her gentle embrace lies something which softly seizes on the nerves of the soul and dissolves thought and will in delightful sensation.

Next morning we departed at daybreak. It was a wonderful morning, the 27th April, fresh and colored and bright everywhere. April, the Italian month of flowers, had not brought us this year much good; it had been a very damp April in Rome, a bitter northern companion. But these last days at the Bay were like the finest May days with us, only interwoven with Italy's golden sun and her wealth of flowers. The roses blossomed upon hedges and walls. The broad cactuses and aloes shone leaden green in the sun, and the houses seemed buried in vine leaves.

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In Bosco tre Case the people put their heads out of the windows, and my companion often received a friendly Early up, early up! bella donna!" But scarcely had we left the town behind us than three men with cords and sticks came trotting by our side. I knew the fellows from old experience, and prepared myself for an endless clatter of words to the top of Vesuvius. It did not last long, however, we saw them moving up to the mountain, gray points on the dark ground. They seemed so lazy, yet proceeded so rapidly.

The vineyards accompanied us far up the heights, when guides and horses had been long since wading in lava gravel. Wherever there was an opening in the black lava rubbish a pair of vines spread their green leaves in the dry desert. At length they ceased, here and there were still to be found coarse

tufts of grass. Even these soon became scarcer, and gradually we were surrounded by the black waste. Nature, when she rages in her primitive fury, terrifies us as with evil, man-hating powers, but nowhere do her traces seem so really ugly, so adverse to all our senses, as on the bare lava fields. In the meantime we still advanced pretty rapidly. The line of Vesuvius when seen from Sorrento is exceedingly beautiful; it goes up and down in one pure delineation. As beautiful as the mountain appears to the eye, as easy is it to ride up, because it rises everywhere gently and uniformly. One is on a considerable height before one suspects it, and the view back on the splendid plains below becomes always wider and more magnificent.

While the lava fields at Bosco tre Case have been formed since fifty years, we came in an hour and a half to a species of small plateau where two streams of lava cross one another, one of which was still smoking a little. This one was a fortnight old, the other had flowed more than twenty years before.

From this out it became steeper, and our horses had to take hold in earnest. "Macaroni! Macaroni!" was the cry with which the guides urged them on. This word, which exercises the greatest charm on the people, must also sound joyfully in the ears of their horses. Nevertheless they were cruelly beaten. Some Italians treat their animals like machines, which feel nothing. I had to think of an esteemed lady friend of mine in Rome, who in the goodness of her heart had founded an asylum for old horses, in order that they might not be whipped to death under the Droskies. A revolting spectacle was by this means removed from the streets; but the Italians laughed at the waste of money, and a priest was not a little indignant, because horses had no souls of their own! Our poor horses

panted and clambered up slowly, and began to stumble. We were heartily glad when the halting-place was reached and we alighted. If you fall here with your horse, you will not escape contusions, because the pieces of lava are as sharp as glass and iron.

The three men, who were waiting at the halting-place, rushed towards us to hold our horses and offer sticks and cords. As we had two men with us, we did not need so many services, and then began that wild play of grimaces, protestations, and oaths, which are meant to soften or frighten the stranger. They conjured us in a stream of words; if they had shortened their sweet night's rest for nothing and nothing only? Merely on our account had they got up so early. Therefore we should be grateful and considerate to them. As I proceeded on, only laughing and jesting with them, all five followed us, and one cried louder than another. But the higher we mounted the more civil they became, and at last all was pleasant and satisfactory, when my wife seized on the cord of one and allowed herself to be dragged along. Then the others stayed behind, and wished us friendly a good journey.

One could easily make the last piece of the way passable for horses; for the present ascent from Pompeii, which is frequently, as it were, paved with pieces of lava, is not to be compared with the former cone of ashes. For a lady, it is always a laborious task to climb up between ashes and broken stones and blocks. Even a man must often stop to take breath, because the air is so warm. However, the whole is child's play to that which a chamois hunter goes through on the chase with his rifle on his shoulder. Our mountains, indeed, are quite silent. Ascending the heights of Vesuvius, one has, on the contrary, the unpleasant feeling as if the broad

back of a black living monster were rising up under one's feet and one were climbing up to his jaws.

"At length," said the guide, we are on the top; no farther can we go." Not at all agreeably surprised, I saw a considerable mountain on my left, on whose summit it unceasingly smoked, rattled, thundered, and discharged huge fragments of ashes and stones up to the sky. Before us, round the foot of this head of Vesuvius, towards the side which is turned from the sea, was a long break like a narrow smoking terrace, covered with ashes and pieces of lava, and streaks of yellow sulphurous dust. From here down the streams of lava had poured quite recently into the valley, which formerly opened deep between the Somma and the cone of ashes. The sharp reefs of the Somma still, indeed, projected, but at their feet now lay heaped-up disorder like the remains of a frightful deluge of black rubbish, sand, and stones. Also here above all was changed. Five years ago Vesuvius had a broad flat summit, in the middle of which was sunk the circular crater. Of this summit only the edge seemed to me to be left, on which we struggled forward, and the new cone of eruption near us had lifted itself out of the old crater. What was formerly a mountain of ashes now showed itself

covered with hardened streams of lava. One could also see by the flying stones which poured out thickly at the edge of the new summit, that there no flat surface any longer surrounded the crater.

It was a real land of hell into which we three were steering, all full of smoke, which now curled upwards, and now rolled lazily away, all black or gray or sulphurous yellow, rubbish, ashes, and fragments thrown up above one another as high as a house, and from the thunderer and rattler on

the top new stones and blocks were continually falling down. The ground was hot everywhere, and if one only pushed away a piece with the foot, the warm vapor immediately poured out. A glance backwards, when the smoke divided, on the glittering landscape, on the light blue gulf beneath, it was as if from hell into paradise. Only the devil's kitchen was here high above, while one thinks usually of the dear angels being in the blue at mosphere.

We first came to a circular gurgling hole of about ten feet in diameter, from which poured out steam and warm sulphurous air. One looked down into the black gulf as into a round smoking chimney. Pieces of lava, which I threw down, gave no sound of striking against anything. Thus, far greater than the opening above is the interior excavation, as if it were covered with a crust. Were bandits to visit now, as they did five years ago, the heights of Vesuvius, they would find this very convenient, if they wished to destroy the traces of some murderous robbery. For what is thrown into this gulf is doubtless consumed in a moment, skin and bones, by the glowing mass in its depths.

When we had gone a few steps farther, the guide pointed to a living stream before us. It seemed from the distance like black streaks and shadows moving away rapidly in a vapor. To come up to it, we had to pass through a little hollow. The guide lifted and helped my wife quickly over it. I stumbled a moment; it was but a second that I had bent my head, but I thought I should have fallen lifeless, so stifling was the hot fume of the sulphur. At the edge of the lava stream, we had before us, as it were, a breaking up of black floes, between which the red-hot mass looked out gloomily. The heat was terrible, for the open

g, from which the stream pro

ceeded, was only a hundred steps farther up. As we wished to go to it, and the guide saw that my companion had courage enough, he seized her again under the arm, and the uncouth-looking man led and lifted her skilfully and attentively over the clods and blocks which had very sharp edges. We had to make a little circuit, which again led us through frightful sulphurous vapors, and then clambered up to the warm edge, until we stood close before the oven which vomited forth the red-hot stream. The lava came just like a stream from a steep mountain, which breaks out suddenly without any grotto or cave, and flows down rapidly. On its exit from the mountain the mass was glowing red; but in the air the surface began to harden immediately, and break up into black scales and pieces.

Never shall I forget the quarter of an hour which I spent at this lava fountain. The crater was straight above us, and did its work with hellish magnificence. Every two to three minutes there was a shove through the clouds of steam which veiled the summit. Before this every time a dull roaring went on, as if deep in the earth, the latter began to tremble gently, then followed hissing and gurgling, then rose whistling, rattling, thundering innumerable stones and blocks in a perpendicular line to the sky with incredible rapidity, whirling clouds of ashes and steam between. High in the air all spread out, and fell back into the crater like rain. Often the ashes were blown towards us; thousands of stones also fell over the walls of the crater, and danced and tumbled down the heights, many times huge blocks rolled to our very feet. All went as if by time, just as regularly as the work of a colossal steam-kettle, which, indeed, would have to be four thousand feet high, and of inconceivable breadth at the bottom.

It was as if subterranean water was entering the fire mountain by minutes and seconds, changed into steam, and thrown out with all the rubbish which was in the chimney. Whenever there were two feebler eruptions, one was certain to follow which was so much the more powerful, and which stood for a moment in the air like a gigantic black tuft. I cannot tell how this slow, solemn measure moved me, in which the most enormous powers of nature were here working. How often have I in the silent night leaned overboard and watched the regular heaving and sinking of the ocean. As formerly on the sea, here on the raging volcano I was filled with a presage of the immutable swinging hither and thither of the ever restless, ever equal pendulum, by which the immeasurable universe does its work.

The wind, which had hitherto driven the clouds of steam away from us, changed somewhat its direction. Suddenly we breathed in sulphurous vapors, scarcely could we see the ground. More quickly than we had ascended, we hastened back to the point of exit. There the air was free, and the wonderful prospect unspeakably refreshing and beneficial.

I had observed that the eruptions fell only over one part of the summit, and that the clouds which veiled the crater had, moreover, longer interstices between them. I therefore proposed to the guide that we should go from the place where we now saw the movement of the lava only from a distance up to the last height. He refused, however, most decidedly. "It is much too dangerous when the mountain is as uneasy as it is now. He would not take the responsibility. A stranger who had gone up three days before had returned with a shattered arm, half dead, struck by a falling block of lava. What did we want on the summit? We

could not reach it under half an hour, and we could not see a particle on the top from the smoke and clouds."

As the guide persisted in his refusal, there remained nothing for us in the meantime but to breakfast. Stretched on the warm ashes, we let our eyes wander over the splendid plains beneath. How the gulf shone! How the mountain peaks projected deep blue into the pure ether! Before and beneath us the true air of heaven, like a sea of deep, pure water, so enticing and so lovely that one might wish for a swing to rock one's self and float in this pure element, -and then a hot fume of sulphur came suddenly out of the black waste behind us, full of smoke and vapor and fury. Before us the air glittered with splendor and clearness, and if we turned round we could see it trembling over the hellish oven, just as the air with us in winter trembles over the hot stoves.

On the whole side of the mountain the different streams of hard. lava stretched clear down. The stream which had poured down on this side a fortnight before had remained on half the height of the mountain, and stretched over the gray fields of ashes like a broad river of black clods and pieces. Deeper beneath, the older lava had formed a dark lake in the green pastures. Still farther down lay the ruins of Pompeii, which had imbedded itself right in the midst of a fruitful semicircle, beautifully bounded by hill and sea.

Yet the eye was always drawn away from the land as by a sparkling mass of light to the gulf and its shining surface. Here, deep beneath us, the steep incline of Vesuvius rose straight up from the mirror of the sea. At both sides the rocky coasts and, opposite, the strand of the islands, were surrounded by a mist like a thin silver veil, but high above, throned in

the blue sky, sharply notched, rose on the left the high-peaked Mont Angelo; in the middle, the huge rock of Capri, lying straight before the gulf; on the right, the proud royal head of the Epomeo at Ischia. On a sharper examination, white points sparkled through the whitish mist, the Castle of St. Elmo, Nisita Vivara, Procida, Ischia.

Yet also in our vicinity there was something to see. Around our breakfast-place there swarmed little narrow chafers of a dark-brown color, like those one finds with us under every loose stone. How came they up? When one scratched the ashes with a stick, a couple of them would fall dead immediately from the hot exhalation. They had not, therefore, crawled up. Neither could their larvæ have lain among the old rubbish; for the ashes, which had covered it, had come too lately from the crater above us. The chafers must, therefore, have been, while flying-for they had wing-sheaths taken in swarms by a current of air, and carried up the mountain. Still, their great number remains enigmatical. This swarming little life near the hot jaws of desolation.

When our breakfast was eaten, and our guide appeared in better humor, I again urged him to attempt climbing up the mountain. Again, with every appearance of terror, he refused and implored us to come some other day, when the mountain was quieter. I asked him what he would do if we went up without him? Then he would wait two hours, he said, and, if we did not come back, he would go down and give notice. As my wife, also, had long been convinced that there was no danger, we began to climb up. It was not so difficult, because the ground, although very hot in some places, consisted less of loose ashes than of stones and a new kind of sulphur-cakes. On looking back I saw that our good Curzo Dom

inica-so our guide was called-had seated himself tranquilly. But when we entered the clouds, he sprang up suddenly, was with us in a few bounds, and played again the diligent and obliging servant, picking his way skilfully between the yellow heaps of sulphur. In less than ten minutes we were on the top. As if stunned, we stood in the beginning at the howling and raging and crashing before us and beneath us. We looked as if from the sharp edge of a wild uptorn chain of mountains down into a huge black gulf, full of steam, from which boiling currents of air and black masses were thrown up. By degrees, when the clouds divided a little, the outlines became clearer and the view more quiet for observation. It was the most frightful, and at the same time most magnificent, scene, one of those spectacles which fix themselves powerfully in the memory and remain henceforth indestructible, just as when one has seen for the first time the great ocean in a wild storm and tempest.

Five years before, as already remarked, the crater was on the level summit of the mountain, in the middle of which it formed a beautiful wide circle. Its inner walls shone in every color, diversified and hung with the most beautiful crystals of sulphur, green and red and yellow and brown. The bottom was a level ground of ashes and sulphur; here and there a little cleft showed itself, out of which steam drizzled up. The whole was an empty kettle of immense diameter sunk into the flat head of the mountain, quite empty, and with beautiful yellow sides.

It was now altogether different. The crater seemed much smaller and much less deep, but it had black fissured walls with sharp reefs, just like the Somma when seen from below. A deep and black uptorn mountain peak would give the best idea of it. The ground, however,