WHY AM I A TERROR.

North Otago Times, 1 November 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHY AM I A TERROR.

VESUVIUS SPEAKS FOIi ITSELF. For many years—according to their feeble computations of time-men have been guessing at the causes of uiy anger. They can only guess, for not all their vaunted science has yet found out the riddle. There is no region of so-called science in which so many guesses are made as in that which essays to deal with the reasons of volcanic outbreaks. When I fling forth iny showers of boiling' lava, red-hot stones, and blinding, suffocating dust, the wise men of the earth can only stand aghast and guess.

Why am I a (error? Let me recall what I have done during a time which seems long to man, lint which to mi.' is but a moment. Il was in A.I). fiH that 1 first got angry. Pompeii, Herailaneum, and Stabiae, abodes of luxury, vice and art, had sprung up upon my fertile, vine-clad •slopes, The inhabitants ate, drank, laughed, loved, and sang the days and nights away, till OXE DAY I WAS AXGRY.

From my top the doomed beings saw rise a fiery cloud in shape like a pinetree—the trunk inky smoke, the branches flames, Dust I Hung upon them in my anger—hot blinding dust; my clouds spread darkness over all, the land rocked and heaved in sympathy with my wrath, while the sea itself recoiled in terror. Three populous cities 1 buried in ashes, with all their inhabitants. Xearly fifteen hundred years afterwards I broke out again. For six months I warned mortals by violent earthquakes, but they took Ho heed, and as a consequence eighteen thousand perished. The dust I threw up was carried hundreds of miles, some of it reaching t'onslnupnople. Again three towns were swept away in my weath— Resina, Grantello, and Torre del Greco. Again the sea was driven hack, and returned again fully thirty paces beyond its former limits.

In 17!) ii I sent form a stream of lava l.lifll feet wiile and l.'i iVrt high So fast did il How that ii only loo!, five hours to reach the sea, disianl four mi'es. .My ill-temurr loo'; another form in 1522, v. hen I llooded the villages of Hun Sebasiiano amJlassi with boiling water. In 18(11 1 again badly damaged Torre del Greco and in one of my sudden outbreaks 1 killed twenty-one people on the spot This was in 1872, when 1 was AXGRY FOR OYER A WEKK, and r.caily demolished San Sebastiano and Massi.

The learned physicians who have been called in from linir to time to diagnose the cause of my bad temper have not done much be,* oml carefully noting the symptoms, and have as yet not come to n conclusion as to the origin of my unfortunate infirm ity. They have found that when my crater is choked with debris, it is a sure sign that I am about to erupt. The accumulations impede the llow ol lava, and this leads to my making fresh apertures and new fissures.

These openings are generally lateral. An internal rumbling is the first intimation that things are about to happen. Then, with thundering reports, 1 eject groat globular clouds of steam. Some people used to thin!; that 1 emitted smoke and flames : but the so-called smoke is steam darkened by incinerated desl, and thr "flames" the reflection of the redhot la\a on this same steam, and the ashes suspended in it.' The rapid condensation of vapour into water and water into steam generates electricity, which manifests itself in the form of lightning playing among the clouds of steam. When my internal channel is choked with debris, ni\ effort to clear it result in those earthquakes which generally precede or accompany my eruptions. Showers of red-hot stones, slags, and cinders are then thrown tip, and the crisis of the fit comes when the lava bubbles up and (lows in torrents down my sides. '1 hen, alter a final ejection of stones and dust, 1 become quiet again—until tho next time.

One of the clever men who have made guesses at the. causes of my periodical fits of temper was Sir Humphry Davy, who hazarded the o| inion that the metallic bases of the earths and alkalies caused vnhanic action on oxidisation by air and water. This theory he afterwards abandoned but it was acepted and reiterated by naubeny and otlieis. but as an elequeut writer remarked a few weeks ago : "There is not another department of physical science in which so many guesses are hazarded as that in which our instructors have pigeon-holed their conclusions as to the origin of volcanic action. ' —"T.A.T."