After lunch, when we made our way to the Funicular, we were accosted by a crowd of tattered boys, who proposed to clean our boots, and begged plaintively for some coins “_Per mangiare macaroni._” We descended into a sort of dark cave and entered an open railway-carriage in sloping position, holding only ten passengers sitting in pairs opposite each other, the back seats on a level with their heads. Two carbiniers escorted our car. I shuddered when we began the ascent, for it was not at all comforting to be aware that lava only served as foundation to the Funicular Railway and might be falling to pieces at any moment. The mount which only takes a few minutes, seemed a whole century to me. Vesuvius was throwing great balls of fire all the time, and the smoke coming out of the volcano spread around us. We had arrived at the highest point that the waggon could reach and had to leave the Funicular and climb to the summit of Vesuvius on foot. We walked on very rough ground, steaming with sulphurous springs. A score of ragged fellows proposed to serve as guides to us, and said that we must absolutely take two men, each of us, to push and pull us up, but I announced proudly that I could perfectly do with one guide only. I hadn’t made the ascent of Mont Blanc for nothing, I suppose! We walked on a moving soil, consisting of ashes and pumice-stone, sulphur smoke passed off in vapour from crevices beneath us; the soil burnt our feet and our shoes filled with lava. The smell of sulphur nearly choked me. I could not breathe without coughing or gasping. Our mount became more and more difficult: there was no longer any path, it was merely like going up a very steep cinder heap; with each step we sank in it to knee-depth. It was very fatiguing and I had to seek the aid of three guides; one guide took me by the right arm, another took me by the left one, and the third pushed vigorously behind. By the time we arrived at the top my dress was in rags. At last, after an hour’s toil, we succeeded in reaching the summit of the cone and were approaching the lip of the crater. At the same time we heard a long low rumbling, like the sound of the sea when the tide is breaking on a distant beach. Right below us yawned an enormous pit, whose sides were gnarled and twisted by the action of terrible heat; we saw the burning liquid issue from the crater. I managed to get so near that the ashes fell on my dress. It was a wonderful sight and needs the pen of Dante to describe the awful impression received when I stood on the brink of the crater and gazed into the depths of an inferno. The head-guide requested me not to approach too near its fiery mouth, but I felt it draw me like a magnet. We could hear the roar of the fire beneath us. We stood there fascinated when a loud report shook the ground and a shower of hot cinders fell around us. We felt like being under a war-fire. I never was in such a fright in all my life and thought our last moment had come. “We