go down a stairway with a guide, who leads them about the chambers,
which are but dimly lighted by the small candles they carry. The
passages, cut in the earth or soft rock, vary both in width and height,
and have been explored in modern times to the aggregate length of six
miles. Some of the bodies were placed in small recesses in the walls,
but I saw none there as I went through, but there were two in marble
coffins under glass. In one of the small chambers the party sang in some
foreign language, probably Italian, and while I could not understand
them, I thought the music sounded well. The Circus of Maxentius, fifteen
hundred feet long and two hundred and sixty feet wide, is near the
Catacombs, as is also the tomb of Caecilla Metella, which is said to
have been erected more than nineteen hundred years ago. It is probably
as much as two miles from the city walls, and I walked on a little way
and could see other ruins still farther in the distance, but I turned
back toward the hotel, and some time after sundown found myself walking
along the banks of the yellow Tiber in the old city. Two days of
sight-seeing had been well spent in and around the former capital of the
world, and I was ready to go on to Naples the next day.

There is a saying, "See Naples and die," but I did not feel like
expiring when I beheld it, although it is very beautifully located. The
ruins of Pompeii, a few miles distant, had more interest for me than
Naples. I went out there on the tenth of September, which I recollect as
a very hot day. Pompeii, a kind of a summer resort for the Roman
aristocracy, was founded 600 B.C. and destroyed by an eruption of Mt.
Vesuvius in A.D. 79. It was covered with ashes from the volcano, and
part of the population perished. The site of the city was lost, but was
found after the lapse of centuries and the Italian Government began the
excavations in 1860. Some of the old stone-paved streets, showing the
ruts made by chariot wheels that ceased to roll centuries ago, have been