After the catastrophe, however, the inhabitants returned, and made the first excavations in order to recover their valuables; and robbers, too--we shall surprise them in the very act--crept into the subterranean city. It is a fact that the Emperor Titus for a moment entertained the idea of clearing and restoring it, and with that view sent two Senators to the spot, intrusted with the mission of making the first study of the ground; but it would appear that the magnitude of the work appalled those dignitaries, and that the restoration in question never got beyond the condition of a mere project. Rome soon had more serious cares to occupy her than the fate of a petty city that ere long disappeared beneath vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and under a thick growth of woodland--remark this latter circumstance--until, at length, centuries accumulated, and with them the forgetfulness that buries all things. Pompeii was then, so to speak, lost, and the few learned men who knew it by name could not point out its site. When, at the close of the sixteenth century, the architect Fontana was constructing a subterranean canal to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell' Annunziata, the conduit passed through Pompeii, from one end to the other, piercing the walls, following the old streets, and coming upon sub structures and inscriptions; but no one bethought him that they had discovered the place of the buried city. However, the amphitheatre, which, roofed in by a layer of the soil, formed a regular excavation, indicated an ancient edifice, and the neighboring peasantry, with better information than the learned, designated by the half-Latin name of _Civita_, which dim tradition had handed down, the soil and debris that had accumulated above Pompeii. It was only in 1748, under the reign of Charles III, when the discovery of Herculaneum had attracted the attention of the world to the antiquities thus buried, that, some vine-dressers having struck upon some old walls with their picks and spades, and in so doing unearthed statues, a colonel of engineers named Don Rocco Alcubierra asked permission of the king to make excavations in the vicinity. The king consented and placed a dozen of galley-slaves at the colonel's disposition. Thus it was that by a lucky chance a military engineer discovered the city that we are about to visit. Still, eight years more had to roll away before any one suspected that it was Pompeii which they were thus exhuming. Learned folks thought they were dealing with Stabiæ.