MOUNT ETNA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 30, 20 September 1911, Page 8

MOUNT ETNA.

PREVIOUS ERUPTIONS. Etna is an isolated volcano on the cast side of Sicily, with a base of 90 miles in circumference and a height of 10,850 ft. The most remarkable of its recorded eruptions arc: 1169, when Catania and 15,000 of its inhabitants were destroyed; 1329, when a new crater opener near the Valdel Rove; 1-144, when the cone fell into the crater; 1537, on which occasion two villages and many human beings perished; from 1603 to 1620 Etna was almost ' continually in' 4 activity; in 1636 three new craters wore formed. The most violent outburst of all w ( as, however, that of 1669, when a chasm twelve miles long opened in the flank of the mountain, and from it issued a line of llamcs, whilst a new crater was made. During an outburst in 1755 a large flood of water was poured down from the Valdel Rove. In 1852-3 there was a violent eruption, which lasted nine months. A torrent of lava, six miles long by two broad, and some twelve feet in depth, was ejected. An eruption last year resulted iu the destruction of two villages, which were buried under the lava flow. About 100 eruptions have been fairly accurately described, sixteen having occurred in the nineteenth century. In 1380 an observatory was built on the south side of the mountain, at a height of 9075 ft above the sea, being the highest inhabited house iu Europe ( nearly KJOOft higher'than the hospice of the groat St. Bernard):