It might have been the chorus of the imprisoned giants of Vulcan's forge as they blew the sparks with their bellows and shook the mountains with the heavy blows of their hammers. As we ascended the upper part of the cone the red-hot stones were falling to our left, and we determined to risk a rapid climb to the edge of the crater on the right or southern side, and to look into it. We did so, and as we peered into the great steaming pit a terrific roar, accompanied by a shuddering of the whole mountain, burst from it. Hundreds of red-hot stones rose in the air to a height of 400 ft., and fell, happily in accordance with our expectation, to our left. We ran quickly down the sandy side of the cone to a safe position, about 300 ft. below the crater's lip, and having lit our pipes from one of the red-hot "bombs," rested for a while at a safe distance and waited for the sunrise. A vast horizontal layer of cloud had now formed below us, and Vesuvius and the hills around Naples appeared as islands emerging from a sea. The brilliant sunlight was reassuring after this night of strange experiences. The fields and lanes were deserted in the early morning as we descended to the sea-level. On our way we met a procession of weird figures clad in long white robes, enveloping the head closely but leaving apertures for the eyes. They were a party of the lay-brothers of the Misericordia carrying a dead man to his grave. Then we found our carriage, and drove quickly back to Naples and sleep! In the following March I acted as guide to my friend Professor Huxley in expeditions up Vesuvius, now quiescent, and to the Solfatara. Then suddenly, in April, the great eruption of 1872 burst upon us. On the first day of the outbreak some imprudent visitors were killed by steam and gas ejected by the lava-stream. By the next day the violence of the eruption was too great for any one to venture near it. The crater sent forth no intermittent "puffs" as in the preceding November, but a continuously throbbing jet which produced a cloud five miles high, like an enormous cauliflower in shape, suspended above the mountain and making it look by comparison like a mole-hill. Showers of fine ashes, as in the days of Pompeii, fell thickly around, accumulating to the depth of an inch in a few hours even at my house in Pausilippo, nine miles distant across the bay. I was recovering at the time from an attack of typhoid fever, and lay in bed, listening to the deep humming sound and wondering at the darkness until my doctor came and told me of the eruption. I was able to get up and see from the window the great cauliflower-like cloud and the vacant place where the ash-cone was, but whence it had how been scattered into the sky. (It has been gradually re-formed by later eruptions, of which the last of any size was in 1906.) I could also see steam rising like smoke from a long line reaching six miles down the mountain into the flat country below. It