THE SAVAII VOLCANO.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11146, 9 December 1907, Page 5

THE SAVAII VOLCANO.

TERRIFIC OUTFLOWING OF LAVA

LIGHTNINGS UNDER THE SEA. APIA, vNovember 21. The volcano on Sava-ii continues to tlirow out enormous quantities of lava. It is highly probable that a. .large area under the sea is being thrust upwards. From a trader, who recently passed over this section of; the sea-bottom, I learned that he was astonished to note during ■the night time jbhat lightnings were apparently playing about on the ocean bottom some . 40 fathoms or so beneath his boat, and he- affirms that some of/ the sea water which came into the boat w-as so hot as to nearly staid his crew. Apparently the line of volcanic activity runs from west to east, and it is not at all unlikely that a new, and perhaps a very terrible, eruption will break put under the sea at the point indicated/ r. Throughout the formerly prosperous j village of Saleaula hardly a breadfruit I tree or banana plant is left alive, and hundreds of pocoaniit trees have' already lost their crowns. In; fact from the lava fields west to Faigamolo these trees, so necessary for the prosperity of the, native people, hate greatly suffered, , and ,it seems certain that the time is not far distant when there will be no valuable cocoanut trees east of Fagamolo, 1 perhaps none even m that village; , . Apparently the. underground tunnels have become choked 'upj and /the extremely hot lava flowed openly m the form of a river about 100 yards wide and 'deep enough to -float thousands upon, thousands of black boulders, ' varying m size from biscuit tins to 400-gallon tanks. Indeed, some of these fragments must , be as large as several : bf these, tanks, and they probably "weigh from 10 to 20 tons each. The stream fells directly^ ijito the sea, arid runs at the rate of.? fully four miles an hour. On a recent visit' it was seen that there were no less than three 1 red, glowing streams/ of molten, metal flowing vdown the old lava bed, and uniting to form one grand fall over the, cliffs. Natives belonging to this vicinity declared that till then they had .never witnessed spch a terrific outpouring.' ;It is 27 months since this eruption started, arid apparently its yiolerice is Accelerated, instead of \subsiding. : Sightseers who haye visited most of the other great eruptions pronounce them, one arid a}l, to be far . inferior to our Savaiian manifestatibn. As changes -are w rapidly occurring^ and as muph may be learnbd by close, observation, it is ;'& pity that we have , no trained scientist to note andset down the different phases of this stu-l peridoUs volcano. Supposing the laya .stream to be 2Soft wide, and averaging' 2ft deep— which is probaly^far under its .'magnitude— and supposing it to be travelling at the rate of four; miles an hour, and dropping a substarice into the sea that weighs; a ton to every 25 cubic feet, 1 the enoi'mbus mass of 7000 tons per minute is being discharged through this one •stream. /At the same time another' stream,, perhaps one-third of 1 this size, ia falling into the sea , at t,he crater-like discharge point. Were this irreat natural wonder, "near any great civilised ; centres, thousands of visitors and students would ■tie attracted to our shores. The great outpour which started on the ,7th of this month js probably the strongest manifestation tluit has occurred. Jf thV.present crater becomes plugged from any cause, it is highly probable; that; a hew vent will be\opened under the sea a mile or so oft the lav^. beds, and then We may witness' a demonstration ap r preaching or surpassing that of Krakatoa. It is liigiily probable that upwards pf five ov '-'six cuibic miles of lava have already" been ejectod from „ our present crater. Possibly this estimate is far under the mark.— Auckland Herald.