AFTER THE ERUPTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 134, 9 June 1906, Page 4

AFTER THE ERUPTION.

DESOLATION AROUND VESUVIUS. LONDON, April 20. The Naples correspondent of the Daily Telegraph gives an interesting account of the recent eruption and its effects. Writing last Saturday, he says:— Ottaiano and San Guiseppe, upon which the brunt of the volcanic disaster has fallen, lie three or four miles cast of Vcsuviano. They are the centre of the vine-growing district of A Naples, and are inhabited by a large population almost wholly dependent upon the industry for their subsistence. The towns are well built, and tin; excellence of the Lagrima Christi made in these Vesuvian vineyards lias brought no small prosperity and comparatively a high standard of comfort t > the 30,000 inhabitants of the district. Last Sunday morning witnessed the transformation of these pleasant and fertile fields, green with the promise of spring, into a waste that tho Sahara would scarcely envy, and the crowded streets of the town into places of solitude and death. A DIM, DEAD WORLD. Yesterday, for the first time since th--; catastrophe, the train crawled slowly out towards the wasted and ruined tract of land. For some time we kept clear of the path of downraming ash, but at Madonna-del-Arco we plunged into the heart of the dark and discoloured pall which was floating 10,000 feet high from the huge Vesuvian column of ash • and scoria) Before, the sight of the leaf-stripped trees in the sun whitely silhouetted against the dark grey blue of the cloud of ashes was striking enough, but the scene inside the stinging dust storm wa.s something to remember for a lifetime. In five minutes the colour had faded out of everything. Only a ruddy and livid tint remained, in which but the nearer trees and houses were visible ; the hedges were bowed down with the burden of ashes, and the vibration of the train between the piled-up scourings from the track caused tiny avalanches from every wall and branch. Every now and then one or two of the unhappy people would stand beside the rails, watch us pass, pale leaden ghosts self-coloured with the dim dead world around them. They spoke seldom, and often, while we at the signals, turned without a word and moved off silently over the muffling blanket of ash.

AMID THE TOTTERING RUINS

At last San Guiseppe was reached, a saddened town of desolation and abandoned streets; it was the same scene of misery and ruin everywhere, and the only pleasant sight was a well-ap-pointed commissariat, which was energetically supplying the bare necessities ot lire _to the grimy and despairing crowd in the market place. I went to the ruined church, and there I was told with every wretched detail the miserable story of the catastrophe. Once inside the disaster explained itsek The building was, and had long been n totally insecure, and the new unfinished church beside it—a handseme structure, already half-built—is evidence that the old one had for some time been condemned as inadequate and probably as unsafe. It was a dreary sight. Naked upon the walls m the grey half-light of mid-day: tho raw paintings of saints and martyrs stood out pitifully and crudely, mere daubs of primary colours. In front were the tottering and awry figures of St. Joseph and the Virgin, Santa Lucia, and I think St. Anna, tawdry and begrimed, while under the still standing sanctuary wall the begrimed broken sacred furniture of the altar still confronted the 6ft deep ruin on thr> floor.

THE RAISED HANDS OF THE , DEAD. ;; When recovered, the bodies were, in most cases, in exactly the same attitudes as those in which the few Pompeiian corpses have been discovered, many on their backs holding ineffectual hands up against the suffocating torrent that crashed down from the broken roof, many trying to save their laces in the crook of their elbows. One thing was forcibly borne in upon me as 1 made my way from the church to the sacristy. Here the debris remains unexplored. Forty or fifty bodies may yet be discovered here. But the outward aspect is exactly the same as that of the church itself, which has been . carefully examined foot by foot. If it is thus impossible to distinguish between debris that has been dug tin ough and thrown back and unsearched wreckage, may not much of Fompeii have been searched also, though it is generally supposed to be untouched? This might explain the paucity of human remains found compared with the terrible plenty in even a lesser catastrophe such as that of last week here and at Ottaiano.