The week passed all too swiftly, and then came a letter from Colonel
Angeli telling them to return to Naples and witness the results of the
eruption. This they decided to do, and bidding good-bye to Signor
Floriano and his excellent hotel they steamed across the bay and found
the "Vesuve" a vastly different hostelry from the dismal place they had
left in their flight from Naples. It was now teeming with life, for, all
danger being past, the tourists had flocked to the city in droves. The
town was still covered with ashes, but under the brilliant sunshine it
did not look as gloomy as one might imagine, and already thousands of
carts were busily gathering the dust from the streets and dumping it in
the waters of the bay. It would require months of hard work, though,
before Naples could regain a semblance of its former beauty.
Their friend the Colonel personally accompanied them to the towns that
had suffered the most from the eruption. At Boscatrecasa they walked
over the great beds of lava that had demolished the town--banks of
cinders looking like lumps of pumice stone and massed from twenty to
thirty feet in thickness throughout the valley. The lava was still so
hot that it was liable to blister the soles of their feet unless they
kept constantly moving. It would be many more days before the interior
of the mass became cold.
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