lighter and more removable mass below, in which the
organic relics may be enveloped. The Herculanean tuffs containing the
rolls of papyrus, of which the characters are still legible, have, as
was before remarked, been for ages covered by lava.

Another mode by which lava may tend to the conservation of imbedded
remains, at least of works of human art, is by its overflowing them when
it is not intensely heated, in which case they sometimes suffer little
or no injury.

Thus when the Etnean lava-current of 1669 covered fourteen towns and
villages, and part of the city of Catania, it did not melt down a great
number of statues and other articles in the vaults of Catania; and at
the depth of thirty-five feet in the same current, on the site of
Mompiliere, one of the buried towns, the bell of a church and some
statues were found uninjured (p. 401.).

We read of several buried cities in Central India, and among others of
Oujein (or Oojain) which about fifty years before the Christian era was
the seat of empire, of art, and of learning; but which in the time of
the Rajah Vicramaditya, was overwhelmed, according to tradition,
together with more than eighty other large towns in the provinces of
Malwa and Bagur, "by a shower of earth." The city which now bears the
name is situated a mile to the southward of the ancient town. On digging
on the spot where the latter is supposed to have stood, to the depth of
fifteen or eighteen feet, there are frequently discovered, says Mr.
Hunter, entire brick walls, pillars of stone, and pieces of wood of an
extraordinary hardness, besides utensils of various kinds, ancient
coins, and occasionally buried wheat in a state resembling
charcoal.[1030]

The soil which covers Oujein is described as "being of an ash-gray
color, with minute specks of black sand."[1031] And the "shower of
earth," said to have "fallen from heaven," has been attributed by some
travellers to volcanic agency. There are, however, no active volcanoes
in Central India, the nearest to Oujein being Denodur hill near Bhooj,
the capital of Cutch, 300 geographical miles distant, if indeed that
hill has ever poured out lava in historical times, which is doubted by
many.[1032] The latest writers on Oujein avow their suspicion that the
supposed "catastrophe" was nothing more than the political decline and
final abandonment of a great city which, like Nineveh or Babylon, and
many an ancient seat of empire in the East, after losing i