been subjected to tolerably complete record for about twenty-four
hundred years. About 500 B.C. the Greeks, who were ever on the search
for places where they might advantageously plant colonies, settled on
the island of Ischia, which forms the western of what is now termed
the Bay of Naples. This island was well placed for tillage as well as
for commerce, but the enterprising colonists were again and again
disturbed by violent outbreaks of one or more volcanoes which lie in
the interior of this island; at one time it appears that the people
were driven away by these explosions.

In these pre-Christian days Vesuvius, then known as Monte Somma, was
not known to be a volcano, it never having shown any trace of
eruption. It appeared as a regularly shaped mountain, somewhat over
two thousand feet high, with a central depression about three miles in
diameter at the top, and perhaps two miles over at the bottom, which
was plainlike in form, with some lakes of bitter water in the centre.
The most we know of this central cavity is connected with the
insurrection of the slaves led by Spartacus, the army of the revolters
having camped for a time on the plain encircled by the crater walls.
The outer slopes of the mountain afforded then a remarkably fertile
soil; some traces, indeed, of the fertility have withstood the modern
eruptions which have desolated its flanks. This wonderful Bay of
Naples became the seat of the fairest Roman culture, as well as of a
very extended commerce. Toward the close of the first century of our
era the region was perhaps richer, more beautifully cultivated, and
the seat of a more elaborate luxury than any part of the shore line of
Europe at the present day. At the foot of the mountain, on the eastern
border of the bay, the city of Pompeii, with a population of about
fifty thousand souls, was a considerable port, with an extensive
commerce, particularly with Egypt. The charming town was also a place