moil upon the fertile farms (in many cases risen phoenix-like from their own ashes) that grow the early beans and tomatoes, the egg-plants and the white fennel roots (_finocchi_) that well-fed travellers devour in the hotels of Naples. Or else they tend the vines that yield the generous _Lagrima Christi_, of which imprudent and heated visitors drink long draughts unmixed with water, and then complain of ensuing languor and pains beneath their waistcoats. Luscious, yet seductive wine! Counsellor of moderation after a first experience of excess! Essence of Vesuvius, whose strange name so puzzled the poet Chiabrera! “Chi fu de’ contadini il si indiscreto, Ch’ a sbigottir la gente Diede nome dolente Al vin’ che sovra gli altri il cuor fa lieto? Lagrima dunque appellerassi un riso Parte di nobilissima vendemmia?” (“Who was the jesting countryman, I cry, That gave so fearsome and so dour a name To that choice vintage, which of all think I Most warms the heart’s blood with its genial flame? Smiles, and not tears, the epithet should be Of juice wrung from so fair a vinery.”) * * * * * * Scarcely had the above pages been written, than the Mountain, which had been drowsing for more than thirty years, suddenly awakened to give appalling evidence of its latent activity and powers of mischief. The eruption of April 1906 has, in fact, surpassed all previous outbursts within living memory, and it may probably be reckoned amongst the most violent of all hitherto recorded. Many of the details of this event doubtless remain fresh in the memory, and in any case the sad condition of numerous towns and villages, and of the beautiful Vesuvian districts, the _paesi ridenti_ as the Neapolitans affectionately term these fertile lands, will serve for some years to come as a sinister and ever-present reminder of the horrors of the past and of the dread possibilities of the future. All vegetation for miles around the volcano has been injured or destroyed, for not only was the Mountain itself covered deep with grit and ashes, but the streets and gardens of Naples, the luxuriant plain of Sorrento, and even the heights of Capri, twenty miles distant across the Bay, were shrouded in a funereal mantle of the greyish-yellow dust that Vesuvius had flung into the air to let fall like a shower of parching and destructive rain upon the earth. How vast was the amount of matter ejected from the crater and scattered in this form over the surrounding country, we may judge from the scientific calculation that 315,000 tons fell in Naples alone! Everywhere appeared the same scenes of desolation, the same dreary tint, for so thickly had this aerial torrent of ashes descended, that buildings, trees and plants were completely hidden by it, the whole landscape suggesting the idea of a recent heavy fall of dirty-coloured snow. _Paesi ridenti_, indeed! It was a land of ugliness and mourning, a city of stifling air and of human terror.