REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES AT POMPEII.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1805, 4 December 1879, Page 3

REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES AT POMPEII.

The eighteenth hundredth anniversary of the destruction of Pompeii has been celebrated by a great gathering from all parts of Europe, and after some introductory speeches men were set to work to open up several pints of the buried city. A correspondent ot the " Times ” says it is impossible to describe the intense expectation on every face as the first picks struck the ground, or the scene around each place to be excavated. Crowds were pressing round every opening ; people were perched all along the tops of the broken walla to the eminent peril of their limbs, and groups were thickly gathered along the higher unexcavated level and on every other point of vantage. Each room to be excavated had been cleared ®f the upper falling-in leaving about 4ft to be removed. The indications given by the preparatory work in one of the larger rooms having been particularly favorable, I took my station there, and witnessed in the course of three hours, as the various objects peeped forth from the scorue one by one and were taken up, such a revelation as I shall never forget. For the first five minutes there was a breathless silence as the men worked, then, as the scoria) fell away, part of a green object became visible. In a moment the workmen’s hands had cleared the space around it, and amid deafening cheers a small bronze horse, nine inches in length, was held aloft. Then a large amphora appeared ; then two bronze vases, one with handles ; then a large iron key, and as each in turn was lifted high for all to see, “ Bene lene ! ” burst in a chorus of hearty satisfaction from the people. A list, with the briefest description of the things which then followed in rapid succession, would fill a column. There were at least a dozen bronze vases of different shapes, sizes, and uses, with and without handles, and in one a number of bronze coins oxydized together, and many other coins were found at intervals during the excavation. There were many handsome bronze fibula), several bronze bracelets, a number of rings, many terra-cotta vases, tazze, and amphora), and a remarkable number of little terracotta water cups for bird cages, various kitchen utensils, a spit, forks and knives of iron, a bronze bottle, a number of little bronze bells, a dagger with ivory handle, a knife with ivory handle, a bronze casserole, and a terra-cotta money-box. After these and many more objects, of which trayful after trayful was carried away, had been taken out, a mass of black material appeared, which, falling to pieces, proved on examination, to be beans, then a quantity of millet and hemp seeds, with considerable remains of the sacks which had contained them, the carbonised wood of grain bins and of a barrel with iron hoops and great masses of the beams of the upper floor, sufficiently solid, but entirely carbonized like charcoal. Among these remains a splendid bronze candelabrum was come upon, but its tall, slender, fluted stem was broken. In short, from noon till 3 o’clock a continued succession of objects were revealed, almost more rapidly than I could note them down. The mere names and briefest memoranda filled sixteen pages in a large note book. Some of the rooms revealed nothing, others a few bronze and terra-cotta vessels; but in one room a skeleton was found, and in the smallest chamber opened four were discovered huddled together.