[7] The present Commodore ----, when a young man, commanded a merchant ship for a short time. On one occasion, inward bound, the yellow fever broke out in the vessel. Most of the crew died; and all on board, with the exception of the young captain, had the disease. The tasks of tending the sick and of taking care of the ship consequently fell on the latter. He cooked, nursed, made and shortened sail, managed the helm, and, after several days of severe labour, brought his vessel safely up to the Hook. What is more extraordinary, he twice reduced the canvass to reefed topsails, and spread it to the royals. Of course, he brought every thing to the windlass. [8] The Beautiful Genoese. LETTER XII. Comparison between Naples and New York.--Vesuvius.--Effects of the Eruption of 1822.--Pompeii.--The great Eruption of 79.--Ruins of Pompeii.--Places of public resort.--Cicero’s Seat.--Gradual Disinterment of the Town.--The Sarno.--Herculaneum.--Theatre and other ancient Remains.--Droll Exhibition of Royal Etiquette. You know the conditions on which these letters are written. I shall go on, in my own desultory manner, gleaning what it appears to me others have left, and speaking of such things only as I know from experience I should most like to have been set right in, did I depend on reading for my own information. Our first night at Naples was absolutely delicious. There was a young moon, and everything was soft and lovely. It reminded us of an evening in August at New York, when people walk without their hats, and enjoy themselves after the intense heat of the day. But Naples has one great advantage over our own town. It lies literally on the sea; for the bay has all the advantages of the sea itself, and scarcely ever wants its refreshing influence. In the deep ravines of streets, one is entirely sheltered from the sun, and on the shore, one feels the air from the water. We have built a northern town in a southern latitude, though not without some excuse for it. But the two towns are as unlike as their scenery. One is condensed, the houses clinging in places, to rocky cliffs, some of the streets actually lying a hundred or two feet above their immediate neighbours; while the other is straggling, and has a surface shaved down nearly to a water level. One is overflowing with population; the other, properly peopled, would contain five times its present numbers. One is all commerce, shipping, drays, and stevedores, the particles of taste and beauty existing in fragments; the other all picturesque, the trade and the port forming the expection. Immediately beneath our windows, here, is a line of sea-beach, of more than a mile in extent, that has no sign of trade about it beyond the boats of fishermen, which lie scattered on the sands and shingle as if disposed there for the study of the painter. But I must not anticipate.