Here were smoking
holes. The night before I had looked at them with a telescope from the
foot of the mountain. I had seen red rivers flowing from them. Now they
were empty. Last night's lava lay on the slope, cooled and black. I
was standing on it. My feet grew hot. I had to keep moving. The air I
breathed was warm and smelled like that of an iron foundry. I pushed my
pole into a crack in the rock. The wood caught fire. I was standing on a
thin crust. What was below? I broke out a piece of the hard lava. A red
spot glared up at me. Under the crust red-hot lava was still flowing. I
knew that it would be several years before it would be perfectly cool."
So for three centuries people have watched Vesuvius at work. But she is
much older than that--thousands of years older--older than any city or
country or people in the world. In all that time she has poured out
millions of tons of matter--lava, huge glassy boulders, little pebbles
of pumice stone, long shining hairs, fine dust or ashes. All these
things are different forms of melted rock. Sometimes the steam blows the
liquid into fine dust; sometimes it breaks it into little pieces and
fills them with bubbles.
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