Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/460

 soldiers were always passing in or out of the gate. The Hotel Vesuve is the best of the dozens at which we have stopped, and the price is only thirty-six francs per day; that is, we have two of the best rooms in one of the best hotels in Italy, and the price is $3.60 per day each, including meals. Living at the hotels in South Africa is pioneering compared with living at the Hotel Vesuve in Naples. Living at hotels is a joke at home, but living at the Hotel Vesuve in Naples makes a man think of breaking up housekeeping Adelaide thinks Naples is the most delightful town we have seen; and the list of towns we have visited includes Pompeii, which was destroyed by an eruption from Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. It was so completely covered up by ashes that its site was forgotten, and it lay neglected for seventeen hundred years. Then the work of digging it out began, and is still in progress, and will continue for many years to come. Pompeii existed long before Naples; it was an old city when Christ was born, and was a seaside resort of the Romans. Probably everyone has read the story of Pompeii, and I shall not print it again, except to express my astonishment over the fact that much of the finest art work in the world today was found in the ruins of Pompeii; the moderns have not been able to equal it. Everything of interest found in the ruins may now be seen in the museum at Naples. The people of Pompeii had excellent plumbing at the time of the eruption; probably the ancients thousands of years earlier knew much that we now call modern. In the museum at Naples may be seen jewelry from Pompeii that would pass for an exhibit made in 1913; pat