A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8481, 8 July 1907, Page 5

A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

By ALBERT DORRINGTON. (Author of "Along the Castlereagh," "Children of the Gully," etc.)

(Published by special arrangement —Copyright reserved.) NO 19.—POMPEII. The excavations at Pompeii illustrate the deep-rooted love of all that 1 existed among the early inhabitants. Buried by the ashes of Vesuvius A.D. 79, the ancient city —where GrecoRoman culture supervened on an Oscan foundation—presents the modern world with an accumulation of public buildings, streets, and private houses in the very shape in which they existed at the time of the great catastrophe. The most important buildings are grouped around the market place or Forum of the city. During the almost recent excavations men and women were unearthed in an almost perfect condition. In the shops adjoining the Foro Civile,' tradesmen were discovered in the act of passing their wares into their customers' hands. In the pereslyies and tricliniums of the wealthy were grouped the figures of musicians, their instruments still grasped in their hands as when the torrents of volcanic sand and ashes overwhelmed them. Within the Porta Ercolano, a man was found nursing a baby while his wife was in the act of/ drawing some cakes from an oven. In another quarter of the city a cobbler was disclosed beating his wife with a leather thong—after the manner of all good cobblers—-and his strong right arm j had remained uplifted for nineteen I centuries probably the slowest I thrashing on record. i Within the columned portico of Casa deli Vettii, a temple-like structure crowded with beautiful statuary and flowers, one pauses to reflect upon the consummate skill and art practised by the Greco-Romans many centuries before the birth of Christ. Surely nothing in modern architecture can compare with the Ultimi savi or the Colonne dei tempio di Venere. The present-diy Italian villagers who cultivate the soil around Vesuvius are enthusiastic about their volcano and its possibilities. They cling to the breathing monster as a 1 child to its mother. They tell you cheerfully ( that the time is not far distant when it will overwhelm Naples as it did Pompeii. For miles around the earth is riven and guttered where the terrible streams of molten lava flowed during the eruption in April last. Where vineyards stood, only a year ago, nothing is to be seen save the eyewearying heaps of assies and sand. "Why do you cling to this quaking monster?" was asked one of the villagers near San Guiseppe. "Are there no other places in Italy where you mighs settle?" "Ah, Signor," came the reply, "we love this breathing mother of ours. She is our life and our wind-ing-sheet. Here we were born with the taste of her breath in our mouths. No, no, Signor, we cannot desert this hot-bosomed mother of ours." This crater worship is worse than the Egyptian pyramid disease. The view from the top of Vesuvius is worth seeing. Naples and the Mediterranean at the foot, blue water and the sunlit domes of hundreds of churches and cathedrals. As the night creeps on the fumes from the lips of the crater steal down with acrid insistence. Now and again one feels an audible, half-tremulous belching underfoot as though some great beast were turning in his cavern below.

In a rorse named after him stands the statue of Guiseppe Garibaldi. It is a magnificent piece of bronze-work surrounded by the laurelled figures of four girls. Passing through the outskirts of Naples one marvels how these people who build palaces of unrivalled .architecture should remain so ignorant of their architectural outlook. On one hand we see artists and sculptors at work in every little shop and basement creating pictures and models of surpassing loveliness. On the other we observe the farm labourer hammering the earth with club-shaped hoe, or ploughing the field with an ancient contrivance that did service during the time of Caesar. Agriculture seems to run counter to architecture in many lands. In Australia a man may live in a 12 x 8 iron and bark shanty, .but he is generally the owner of an up-to-date arming implements, a disc plough, or seventy-guinea harvester at least. (To be Continued.)