FINE SIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 291, 8 December 1937, Page 22

FINE SIGHT.

VOLCANO'S ERUPTION. MAN LIVES ON VESUVIUS. ONLY ONCE IN DANGER. With lava, bubbling and flames and ash leaping into the air near him, the assistant-director of the meteorological observatory on Vesuvius told an "Evening Standard" reporter by telephone of the volcano's latest eruption. Crowds had been out in Napjes at night watching the spectacle. "It is a fine sight," the assistantdirector said, "the best we have had perhaps since 1933 or 1929. But it is not quite up to the standard of those two eruptions. They were in the good old days. "As I am talking to you I can see lava outside pouring down into the Valley of Hell, and the flames at the summit. "In the crater it is rumbling slightly, although the noise is also not as loud as I have sometimes heard it. "The eruption will continue probably for several days. Sometimes the eruptions last for a fortnight. 1 "This will hardly be an eruptioSi on the scale of the great one of A.D. 79, which destroyed Pompeii. There has never been another like that, and probably never will be. "The best, or, rather, the worst, eruption I have seen was in 1929. It was the only time I have ever been in danger on Vesuvius. "Usually we have ample warning from certain signs on the mountain about a fortnight before the eruption is due, but in 1929 it started suddenly, like a flash, when I was actually in the crater.

"Fla.mes and lava shot up within a few yards of me. I just managed to get out before the main explosion. I live up here near the top for most of the year."