IN THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

Going towards Somma

While we run at all speed with the elegant automobile a kind friend has lent us towards the other Vesuvian countries not touched by the lava, but about which all kind of sad reports reach us, we hear on all sides the same selfish expressions, the same striking, and wounding words. Where are you going? Where do you wish to go? Are you mad? You cannot go any farther up, there is lava, there are stones, lapillus, ashes! That country is destroyed! The other side is surrounded! You are mad!

But though irritated, annoyed, offended by this superficial and selfish talk, we go on, we advance towards Cercola, Sant'Anastasia, the Madonna dell'Arco, following the tracks of the Royal Automobile, as the king and queen have climbed up there before us, and have already come back. We cannot believe that we may not reach Somma, or that Somma is destroyed; we do not believe that one cannot get to Ottaiano by some means at least, even if this pretty and rich little town is destroyed as people with a half ironical, half resigned smile, tell us, unwilling as they are to go, and give their help. Ah! sure, we poor writers of human troubles can do but very little, but we want to see this sorrow with our own eyes, we want to relate it that it might touch the heart of people to heroism and pity, and we want to relate it just as it is, just as it exists, by personally witnessing everything, as we have always done.

On this road that goes to Somma, other people have passed an hour ago, and we also want to go over it all, even through ashes and lapillus, over the stones, just as we can, by carriage, on foot, any-way. As we advance we begin to see all over the country around us, something like a mantle of snow. Has it snowed on the fields, on the trees?

No, the Vesuvian ashes, with the rain and the dew, have already changed into chlorate of ammonia, and all is now white and brilliant under the pale rays of the sun. Here on the right, behind the mountain of Somma, things have taken a dark, livid aspect. An immense cloud of ashes and smoke is bending down over the hidden cone in the direction of Torre Annunziata, Resina Portici, and night seems to reign there. Here instead, all is clear, all is candidly white. Our automobile is now going slower, it cracks between two deep sinks of ashes and lapillus. The wheels are now beginning to sink, and at the first little houses of Somma Vesuviana we stop, and ask the people if the king has passed. Yes, yes, the king has reached Somma Vesuviana with his automobile, and has insisted on continuing to Ottaiano, but the automobile having been caught and sunk in the ashes and lapillus, it has been impossible to advance. He has insisted on going on foot, but it would have been at least a four hours' journey. The carabineers have tried to push, the royal automobile with their arms, but without success. Then the king has decided to go back. And now, in the great solitude of this grand landscape, in the silence of things, we are really struck by the idea that something terrible must have happened up there, and that the disaster may come near being, what it was one day at Pompei!

At Somma Vesuviana

We leave our automobile. Two other large empty ones watched by a chauffeur, are here. One belongs to the duke of Aosta, who has come here this afternoon with count d'Aglié and lieutenant Gaston Pagliano proceeding with them on horseback or on foot to Ottaiano or S. Giuseppe di Ottaiano, knee deep through ashes, stones, and lava. The other automobile belongs to the duchess or Aosta. This brave and courageous woman has reached this place a little later, and has gone to Ottaiano on foot, not caring for the enormous difficulties and fatigue she would encounter. While we are trying to imitate her, here is all the population of pretty Somma Vesuviana around us: men, women, children, crowding, and putting to us a thousand questions, while we, answering, address just as many to them. Digging up the earth they show us the three stratus forming the mound that has covered their little homes and fields. Three stratus, a reddish one, a blackish one, and one of stones, alas! just like Pompei. Women with babies in their arms speak slow and low, and mournfully complain of their fate. They have, had, as they say, three nights of hell: the first all lightning and flashes, when their terror has been terrible, though they thought they were protected by the great mountain of Somma, and no lava would run down on their side. The second a night full of fright and ruination, and the third, the one between Saturday and Sunday, when the terrible rain of ashes, lapillus, and stones, began.

They have fled terrified through their farthest fields, way down as possible. The most courageous have past the night in the open air, with their children around them, trembling with fear praying, and weeping. Next day they have been wandering around their houses, trying to free them from the weight of the cinders and stones, helping each other, simply resigned and abandoned to their fate, trying all the means to conquer it. The third night, the last one, they have all slept with their poor little ones, clasped in their arms, on the straw, in the fields, not daring to go back into the houses.

Men and women are now looking at their buried fields, their destroyed harvest, the heavy cinders, the heavy rocks. They look at the work of this night which throws them in the most abject poverty and starvation, they look over it all with eyes of calm despair, and it seem to me a shame for the human heart that they hope nothing, and ask nothing from the men of Naples, their brothers in God, their brothers in Jesus. They ask nothing, because they know of obtaining nothing.

At Somma Vesuviana one man has died in Margarita street. An old man by the name of Raffaele, known as Tuppete, He died in his bed, crushed under the fall of his roof. Twenty or thirty houses have tumbled down at Somma Vesuviana, one church is in great danger, the walls of another are cracked. Men bend their heads and are silent, others sadly admit that their misery is nothing compared to the destruction of Ottaiano where more than one hundred and fifty people have died. Has Ottaiano then been destroyed only by the fall of lapillus and stones? Surely the lava cannot run on it, as the town is placed on the opposite side of the eruption.—Have really so many people perished under this heavy and fiery rain, while not one has perished under the lava? Is it Pompei again? Let us go there then, if it is true.

At Ottaiano

Here we are on the road of the Croce, going step by step, with the slowness of death, sinking deep in the ashes, and looking in vain for a safer path. We go over it with a sense of immense oppression, not knowing when or whether we will arrive, not knowing if our strength will last until we get there. We meet a cart coming down. The poor horse is already tired. It would take at least three horses to drag a carriage through these roads now made of ashes and stones. The cart driver tells us about the many people who have perished at Ottaiano and shakes his head when we ask him the number. It is large, many people were killed while praying in the Oratorio of San Giuseppe! Crushed under the weight of our sorrow, we resume our walk on the road of the Croce, where so few people have passed before. Only a prince of Casa Savoia, only a daughter of the house of France and the soldiers of Italy, the brave soldiers the good soldiers, have come this way. What time is it when we reach Ottaiano? Who knows? Who knows anything more about the hour, about time, about life, in these last four days? We feel as if we had been walking for centuries in this hard, rough, horrible street: we feel as if we had to stop at every step and rest; at last, we reach the new Pompei, Ottaiano.

An untold horror of devastation is around us. The most beautiful as well as the poorest houses have tumbled down under the weight of the cinders and stones, and everywhere you see a precipice of bricks, beams, and rocks: it is the death-like solitude of the places where death has passed. A gentleman from Ottaiano, who has just returned here to give some help, tells us all about the catastrophe. It seems that the cinders have begun to fall thickly during the second night from Saturday to Sunday, and it was then that the people, getting alarmed, have left their houses, the exodus having started about dawn. But in the following morning, the stones have come down thicker and larger, rebounding and accumulating, and, at the remembrance of the horrible scene, and the flight from Ottaiano, poor M. Cola's voice trembles. He however, with the help of his brothers, managed to save his mother, carrying her in his arms to Sarno where she is now, he told us, perfectly safe. It seems that in a few minutes all the panes of the windows were broken, people running away with chairs and tables on their heads, to protect themselves from the rocks, others with folded covers and pillows, shielding their heads, and shoulders. And while they fled on every side, falling down in their haste, wounding their hands and knees under the infernal shower of hissing rocks, the houses at Ottaiano, were tumbling down. Poor baroness Scudieri, while running away, must have heard the crash of her palace, and of the whole manufacture Scudieri falling in ruins, while in the same moment on the other side Ateneo Chierchia, and the house belonging to the brothers Cola, just then remoderned, were falling in a heap. What struck us as strange was how, in the midst of so great a ruination, the grand palace of Prince Ottaiano remained untouched, standing alone and erect as if in mute contemplation of this immense destruction.

To Nola, Sarno, Castellamare, Marigliano, people fled from Ottaiano, and the poorest, finding no shelter, ran about the fields, and over the whole country, as far as possible from the place of the disaster. There must be dead people under these stones. In a house seven persons have been buried, a whole family, and through the door we see the half bust of a man, dead, a poor wretch who must have tried to open it, and escape, just as many did in the catastrophe of Pompei! Beautiful Ottaiano, the finest place in the Vesuvian comunes is, sadly to say, destroyed for four fifth, and what remains will have to be demolished, being quite in a dangerous condition. Poor abandoned, isolated country, helped by nobody, left to its fate for a whole day and a half. But for the duke of Aosta, who went there with his troops, it would have remained in this condition with its dead and wounded for eight days longer. And yet people are returning here and they even dare to go over the road of the Croce. Here comes a family of peasants on an old broken down char-à banc. The poor mother has a child clasped in her arms, she is as pale as death! The father holds another child, four larger ones are laying on some straw, a real human pile, sad and deserted. We tell them not to return to Ottaiano, for their house will surely fall on their heads. But they protest, and declare that they will sleep in the open air, that they want to return among the ruins. The woman is terribly pale, and the children are terrorised. Here is a tall thin old man, coming on foot. Ah! how he weeps, how he weeps! How sad it is to see an old man weeping. We tell him not to venture in Ottaiano, we beg him not to go, and he excitedly exclaims: I want to see, I want to see whether anything has remained of our country, and, he goes in almost stumbling, disappearing into the new Pompei.

Death

Only this formidable name can be given to Ottaiano. From that terrible Saturday night, till the following Sunday when the first threatening signs appeared, the church bells have been ringing madly and everybody has started to pray.

The fall of ashes increasing and getting quite menacing, Rev. parson Luigi d'Ambrosio has requested the population to meet in the church of the Oratorio of San Giuseppe. How many were they? Three-hundred? Yes, perhaps three-hundred. The bells continued to ring desperately, as in a frantic appeal, the ashes fell thicker and thicker, down bounded the stones accumulating heavily everywhere, and crushing every thing. All at once, with a tremendous roar, down comes the roof of the church crushing and killing all those who were under it praying. Perhaps hundred or eighty people have escaped, running away mad with terror, and among these, fortunately, the Rev. parson d'Ambrosio has saved his life.

But from one hundred to one hundred and twenty persons have been crushed and asphyxiated under the rocks and beams of the old church, and by the enormous quantity of ashes which have buried them. And yet, while they are taken out by our brave and intrepid soldiers, we realize that most of these poor victims, have really died from suffocation.

The women are many, and many are the children. But behold! Here comes the woman of all goodness and tenderness, here comes the Duchess of Aosta, led by her tender heart to this country of death. She bends over the corpses and is piously praying over them.

Then she goes towards a tent where the wounded people have been taken, and speaks kindly to them, encouraging and helping them. How many are the corpses already drawn out from the ruins at S. Giuseppe of Ottaiano? Sixty? There are some more. How many are the wounded? Twenty, thirty? The soldiers are still searching and more will be found. As for the people remaining, they are frightened to death from the shock, we must give them bread, and shelter. This, this is really the country of death! There, where the lava has passed, people have fled, where showers of mud have fallen, people have been able to escape, where there has been great danger, help has been brought, like at Boscotrecase, Torre Annunziata, Resina, Torre del Greco, but here, at Ottaiano, at S. Giuseppe, in this great solitude and abandon, the terrible host, death, has passed.

April 10^th 1906.