The duke of Aosta has set off for Boscotrecase, Cardinal Prisco has gone also there, and later, the duchess of Aosta has followed. It looks as though a whole crowd was starting out for that town. All carriages seem to go in the same direction, towards the Circumvesuviana station. The tramways are loaded! What are we doing here, why don't we start like all the others? Let us go, and see these deserted, and destroyed countries, let us go and see Boscotrecase threatened by the monstruous lava ready to burn it up. Let us run to see Torre Annunziata threatened by the same, let us go to hear the desperate weeping of women, the screams of children, the moans of the old people. In the train, in the train, for it is too slow going by carriage. Let us go like thousand of people have gone, in the train, since we don't possess an automobile which could help us to fly on the main roads, way up yonder, where destruction takes place. In the train, in the train! It is easier said, than done. An immense crowd of people anxious to start, are seiging the station of the Circumvesuviana, and the most extraordinary scenes naturally happen, since, if this beautiful and fine railroad, girdling Vesuvius, carries generally about a thousand persons a day, it cannot transport to-day fifty thousand. And really it has already worked wonders, due of course, to the energy, calm, and tact of Mr. E. Rocco, and director Ingarami. It has worked wonders, doubling and multiplying its trains from dawn to mid-night, each of them starting with their platforms packed, with their cars jammed with people, standing the most impetuous assaults at every small, intermediate station. For whole bands of foreigners, are waiting in these small stations, and they rush in to take whatever seat they may find. Here all species of Neapolitans are coming, the best known as the least: groups, coteries, families, parties of friends, who like an immense human legion intend to go to Boscotrecase. And little by little, with the young foreign girls attired in their short excursion dresses, their hats covered with large white veils, with the elegant and loquacious Neapolitan ladies, with the friends and acquaintances which one meets, with the continuous screaming and yelling, now stronger, now softer, with the most extraordinary buzz of conversation, the sense of fright and anguish gradually dies away. The big cloud of ashes which wrapped us up in the beginning of the trip, disappears after Bellavista, the sky is getting clearer, and of a delicate azure colour. In the train people begin to joke, and at S. Giorgio a Cremano, a whole company of young girls, jesting and laughing, gets up in our train. And now this immense torrent of humanity running towards Boscotrecase, looks almost like a large pleasure excursion. One would think that merry and thoughtless life had had the best of fright. And what fright! The main-road going from Torre Annunziata to Boscotrecase, is getting dark, almost black