sco Trecase, on the mountain's southern declivity, had
been transformed into a gray island of ruin by the ashes from the
crater of the volcano. Torrents of liquid fire, resembling in the
distance serpents with glittering yellow and black scales, coursed in
all directions, amid rumblings, detonations and earth tremblings while
a pall of sulphurous smoke that hovered over all made breathing
difficult.

While the inhabitants, driven before soldiers, were urged to seek
safety in flight, fiery lava was invading their homes and the cemetery
where their dead was buried. In about 48 hours after the eruptions
began not a trace remained of Bosco Trecase, a city of 10,000
population. Several lads who were unharmed when the danger following
the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius seemed most imminent subsequently
ventured to walk on the cooling lava. They went too far and the crust
broke under their weight. They were swallowed up before the helpless
onlookers.

About the same time the village of Bosco Reale, to the eastward,
became threatened, and the women of the village, weeping with fright,
carried a statue of St. Anne as near as they could go to the flowing
lava, imploring a miracle to stay the advance of the consuming stream.
As the fiery tide persisted in advancing the statue had to be
frequently moved backward.

Ottajano, at the northeast foot of the mountain, and 12 miles from
Naples, was in the path of destruction and the scenes there when the
first victims were unearthed were most terrible. The positions of the
bodies showed that the victims had died while in a state of great
terror, the faces being convulsed with fear. Three bodies were found
in a confessional of one of the fallen churches.

One body was that of an old woman who was sitting with her right arm
raised as though to ward off the advancing danger. The second was that
of a child about 8 years old. It was found dead in a position which
would indicate that the child had fallen with a little dog close to it
and had died with one arm raised across its face to protect itself and
its pet from the crumbling ruins. The third body, that of a woman, was
reduced to an unrecognizable mass.

Other bodies which were found later caused such an impression among
the already frantic population that the authorities did not deem it
advisable to permit any more bodies to be identified for the time
being.

Five churches and ten houses fell under the weight of ashes and
cinders, wh