asket on his head full of wine, bread, and
oranges, and while we were slipping, and clambering, and toiling
with immense difficulty he bounded up, with his basket on his
head, as straight as an arrow all the time, and bothering us to
drink when we had not breath to answer. I took three or four
oranges, some bread, and a bottle of wine of him at the top, and
when I asked Salvatore what I should pay him, he said two carlins
(eightpence English). I gave him three (a shilling), and he was
transported. It was a magnificent evening, and the sunset from
the top of Vesuvius (setting in the sea) a glorious sight--

For the sun,
Declined, was hastening now with prone career
To the ocean's isles, and in th' ascending scale
Of heaven the stars, that usher evening, rose.

The view, too, all round is very grand; the towns round the Bay
appear so clear, yet so minute. I had formed to myself a very
different idea of the crater, of which the dimensions are very
deceitful; it is so much larger than it appears. The bottom of
the crater is flat, covered with masses of lava and sulphur, but
anybody may walk all about it. At one end stands what looks like
a little black hillock, from which smoke was rising, as it was
from various crevices in different parts; that little hillock is
the crater from which all eruptions burst. The mountain was
provokingly still, and only gave one low grumble and a very small
emission of smoke and fire while we were there; it has never been
more tranquil. The descent is very good fun, galloping down the
cinders; you have only to take care not to tumble over the
stones; slipping is impossible. The whole ascent of the mountain
is interesting, particularly in that part which is like a great
ocean of lava, and where the guides point out the courses of the
different eruptions, all of which may be distinctly traced. We
got to the Hermitage just as it was dark; there was still a red
tint round the western horizon, and the islands were dimly
shadowed out, while the course of the Bay was marked by a
thousand dancing lights. Salvatore has especial care of the
mountain under the orders of Government, to whom he is obliged to
make a daily report of its state, and he is as fond of it as a
nurse of a favourite child, or a trainer at Newmarket of his best
race-horse, and delights in telling anecdotes of old eruptions
and phenomena, and of different travellers