It would require months of hard work, though, before Naples could regain a semblance of its former beauty.
Their friend the Colonel personally accompanied them to the towns that had suffered the most from the eruption.

At Boscatrecasa they walked over the great beds of lava that had demolished the town--banks of cinders looking like lumps of pumice stone and massed from twenty to thirty feet in thickness throughout the valley.

The lava was still so hot that it was liable to blister the soles of their feet unless they kept constantly moving.

It would be many more days before the interior of the mass became cold.
Through the forlorn, dust-covered vineyards they drove to San Guiseppe, where a church roof had fallen in and killed one hundred and forty people, maiming many more.

The Red-Cross tents were pitched in the streets and the whole town was one vast hospital.