The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-lytton

IT was when the heats of noon died gradually away from the earth, that / Glaucus and Ione went forth to enjoy the cooled and grateful air. At / that time, various carriages were in use among the Romans; the one most / used by the richer citizens, when they required no companion in their / excursion, was the biga, already described in the early portion of this / work; that appropriated to the matrons, was termed carpentum, which had / commonly two wheels; the ancients used also a sort of litter, a vast / sedan-chair, more commodiously arranged than the modern, inasmuch as the / occupant thereof could lie down at ease, instead of being / perpendicularly and stiffly jostled up and down. There was another / carriage, used both for travelling and for excursions in the country; it / was commodious, containing three or four persons with ease, having a / covering which could be raised at pleasure; and, in short, answering / very much the purpose of (though very different in shape from) the / modern britska. It was a vehicle of this description that the lovers, / accompanied by one female slave of Ione, now used in their excursion. / About ten miles from the city, there was at that day an old ruin, the / remains of a temple, evidently Grecian; and as for Glaucus and Ione / everything Grecian possessed an interest, they had agreed to visit these / ruins: it was thither they were now bound.

Their road lay among vines and olive-groves; till, winding more and more / towards the higher ground of Vesuvius, the path grew rugged; the mules / moved slowly, and with labor; and at every opening in the wood they / beheld those grey and horrent caverns indenting the parched rock, which / Strabo has described; but which the various revolutions of time and the / volcano have removed from the present aspect of the mountain. The sun, / sloping towards his descent, cast long and deep shadows over the / mountain; here and there they still heard the rustic reed of the / shepherd amongst copses of the beechwood and wild oak. Sometimes they / marked the form of the silk-haired and graceful capella, with its / wreathing horn and bright grey eye -- which, still beneath Ausonian skies, / recalls the eclogues of Maro, browsing half-way up the hills; and the / grapes, already purple with the smiles of the deepening summer, glowed / out from the arched festoons, which hung pendent from tree to tree. / Above them, light clouds floated in the serene heavens, sweeping so / slowly athwart the firmament that they scarcely seemed to stir; while, / on their right, they caught, ever and anon, glimpses of the waveless / sea, with some light bark skimming its surface; and the sunlight / breaking over the deep in those countless and softest hues so peculiar / to that delicious sea.