If
these catch a man, he hath no way to save his life. If they fall upon
houses, the roofs are crushed by the weight. If the wind blow stiff,
the ashes rise out of sight and are carried to far countries. But this
bellowing comes only every hundred years or thereabout. And the air
around the mountain is pure. None is more healthy. Physicians send
thither sick men to get well."
The ashes that had covered Pompeii changed to rich soil. Green vines
and shrubs and trees sprang up and covered it, and flowers made it gay.
Therefore people said to themselves:
"After all, she is a good old mountain. There will never be another
eruption while we are alive."
So villages grew up around her feet. Farmers came and built little
houses and planted crops and were happy working the fertile soil. They
did not dream that they were living above a buried city, that the roots
of their vines sucked water from an old Roman house, that buried statues
lay gazing up toward them as they worked.
About three hundred years ago came another terrible eruption. Again
there were earthquakes. Again the mountain bellowed. Again black clouds
turned day into night. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud. Tempests
of hot rain fell. The sea rushed back and forth on the shore. The whole
top of the mountain was blown out or sank into the melting pot.
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