THE CITY OF DEATH.

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hearing. This guide informed us that he had waited on General Sheridan when he visited Pompeii. He was a soldier, and we learned that the guides are all soldiers, who receive duty here as a reward for meritorious service. There was some comfort in seeing Pompeii accompanied by a soldier, and a brave one.

the outside you might imagine it an embankment, and expect to see a train of cars whirling along the surface. It is only when you pass up a stone-paved slope a few paces that the truth comes upon you, and you see that you are in the City of Death. You see before you a long, narrow street running into other narrow streets. You see quaint, curious houses in ruins. You see fragments, statues, mounds, walls. You see curiously painted

walls. You see where men and women lived and how they lived-all silent and all dead-and there comes over you that appalling story which has fascinated so many generations of men-the story of the destruction of Pompeii and Hercula

neum.

You will say, "Yes, every schoolboy knows that story;" and I suppose it is known in schoolboy fashion. It will complete my chronicle of General Grant's visit if you will allow me to tell it over again. In the grand days of Rome, Pompeii was a walled city numbering about twenty thousand inhabitants. It was built on the sea-coast, and was protected from the sea by a wall. I should say in extent it was about as large as the lower section of New York, drawing a line across the island from river to river through the City Hall. It was an irregular five-sided town, with narrow streets. Its inhabitants were, as a general thing, in good standing, because they came here to spend their summers. I suppose they had about the same standing in Roman society as the inhabitants of Newport have in American society. Pompeii was an American Newport, a city of recreation and pleasure. It is said the town was founded by Hercules, but that fact you must verify for yourself. It was the summer capital of luxurious Campania, and joined Hannibal in his war against Rome. Hannibal proposed a kind of Southern Confederacy arrangement, with Capua as capital. After Hannibal had been defeated Capua was destroyed and Pompeii sparedspared in the end for a fate more terrible. Cicero lived near Pompeii, and emperors came here for their recreation. In the year 13 the city had an omen of its fate by an earthquake, which damaged the town seriously, throwing down statues, swallowing up sheep-so appalling "that many people lost their wits." In 64, when Nero was in Naples singing, there was another earthquake, which threw down the building in which his majesty had been entertaining his friends. This was the second warning. The end came on the 24th of August, 79, and we know all the facts from the letters written by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus-letters which had a mournful interest to the writer, because they told him that Pliny the Elder lost his life in the

general desolation. Pliny tells how he was with his uncle, who commanded the Roman fleet at Misenum. Misenum is just across the bay from Pompeii-twenty miles, perhaps, as the On the 24th of August, Pliny the Elder was taking the benefit of the sun-that is to say, he had anointed his person and walked naked, as was the daily custom of all prudent Romans. He had taken his sun bath and retired to his library, when he noticed something odd about Vesuvius. The cloud assumed the form of a gigantic pine tree and shot into the air to a prodigious height. Pliny ordered his galley to be manned, and sailed across the bay direct for Vesuvius, over the bay where you may now see fishing boats and steamers.

A letter from some friends whose villas were at the base of the mountain warned him that there was danger; but like a Roman and a sailor he sailed to their rescue. As he drew near the mountain the air was filled with cinders. Burning rocks and pumice-stones fell upon his decks, the sea retreated from the land, and rocks of great size rolled down the mountain. His pilot begged him to return to Misenum and not brave the anger of the gods. "Fortune," he said, "favors the brave-carry me to Pomponianus." Pomponianus was what we now call Castellamare, a little port from which the fish come. Here the erup

tion fell upon him. The houses shook from side to side, the day was darker than the darkest night. The people were in the fields with pillows on their heads, carrying torches. The fumes of sulphur prostrated Pliny and he fell dead. The scene of the actual destruction can be told in no better words than those of the younger Pliny, who watched the scene from Misenum. Remember it was twenty miles away, and you can fancy what it must have been in Pompeii. "I turned my head," writes Pliny, "and observed behind us a thick smoke, which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed, while we had yet any light, to turn out into the high road, lest we should be pressed to death in the dash of the crowd that followed us. We had scarcely stepped out of the path when darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up and all the lights are extinct.

Nothing then was to be heard but the shrieks of women, the screams of children and the cries of men; some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die from the very fear of dying, some lifting their hands to the gods;

but the greater imagining that

the last and eternal night had come which was to destroy the world and the gods together. Among these were some who augmented the real terrors by imaginary ones, and made the affrighted multitude falsely believe that Mi

senum was ac

tually in flames. At length a glimmering light appeared which we imagined to be rather the forerun

ner of an approaching burst of flame, as in truth it was, than the return of day. However, the fire fell at a distance from us. Then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap. At last this dreadful darkness