Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The earth is stirring - from the staggering pillars
The idols tumble down! Beset with fear, people
Throng, old and young alike, beneath the fiery dust
And running in a rain of stones they flee the city.¹8
Riding on the wave of interest in the subject, Bulwer Lytton's
topic became an instant bestseller, and was soon translated into
ten languages, followed by theatrical dramatizations and, in the
twentieth century, by Hollywood films. But where Poulett Scrope
and Lyell had carried out their own researches on volcanoes,
Bulwer Lytton had turned to Pliny the Younger, whose letters
to Tacitus describing the ad 79 eruption were already well known.
As a man who wrote his novels at tremendous speed, Bulwer
Lytton found Pliny to be a rich seam to mine for his invention.¹9
Pliny's account, of which excerpts were quoted in chapter Three,
is as precise and particular a description of an eruption as any
we might now wish for. Bulwer Lytton, nearly 1,800 years later,
writes an account that is heavily dependent on Pliny.
First, the eruption: 'a vast vapour shooting from the summit
of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, black-
ness, the branches, fire!'²0 Then comes the earthquake: '[They]
felt the earth shake beneath their feet; the walls of the theatre
trembled: and, beyond, in the distance, they heard the crash of
falling roofs.' Then, the ash:
an instant more, and the mountain-cloud seemed to roll
towards them, dark and rapid, like a torrent; at the same
time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes mixed
with vast fragments of burning stone! Over the crushing
vines; over the desolate streets; over the amphitheatre itself;
far and wide, with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea
- fell that awful shower!
Then, the cloud:
The cloud, which had scattered so deep a murkiness over
the day, had now settled into a solid and impenetrable mass.
