ABSTRACT
ON Wednesday, April 4th, as I was returning from a dayin charming Capri, I noticed that
the throng of tourists that daily crowded the Capri steamers were all looking at Vesuvius with unusual excitement, and, turning, I saw a thick coil of brown smoke oozing out of the crater, quite different from the usual intermittent puffs. It rose a little way and then was blown in a long, slow stream out across the bay, and soon a shower of fine cinders fell on us as we sat looking up at the mountain. This was the beginning of the great eruption of 1906.
