MOUNT ETNA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 36, 27 September 1911, Page 8

MOUNT ETNA.

Etna lias the most evil reputation of all the. world’s volcanoes, more evil oven than that of its famous neighbour Vesuvius. It has been under the observation of civilised man for so many centuries that the history if its misdeeds is very complete. Excepting for the huge chasm of the Val del Bovc, which, according to Sir Charles Lyell, must have been torn in its flank by some terrible eruption in prehistoric times, the mountain has a singularly uniform and graceful contour. This uniformity is slightly broken by the enormous number of subsidiary cones scattered all over its surface. One of these— Monti Rossi—is a double crater thrown up in the famous eruption of 1689, which was observed and recorded by the Earl of Winchilsea, who was British Ambassador at Constantinople. 1 He states that the eruption destroyed 1 the habitations of 27,000 persons and made two hills a thousand paces high. The actual height at the present day is 450 ft. Professor Bouncy describes the curious appearance of the cones by saying: “So frequent are these parasitic cones that a model of Etna on a rather small scale looks as if the mountain were suffering from a bad attack of pimples.” The peculiar significance of the pimples will be realised when it is pointed out that each one may at any moment become a centre of volcanic activity, pouring out lava, hot a dims, steam, or even boiling water'. An instance of the last occurred in the eruption of 1755, when a great Hood of water issued from the fissure to which allusion has already been made, the Val del Bovc.

Seeing that.some 300,000 people live on the fertile lower slopes of the mountain, it is no.wonder its victims have been many. Some of the most horrible results have been produced when water from one direction has mqt lava coming from another. An occurrence of this kind took place in 1843. A stream of lava was slowly invading some cultivated land, and many people wore advancing as near as possible to its edge, endeavouring to save their property. Suddenly its extremity was seen to swell up like an enormous blister, and then to hurst, discharging a volley of steam with a. quantity of fragments, solid and liquid. Sixty-nine persons were either killed outright or. received fatal injuries. The catastrophe was caused by lava having flowed over a subterranean reservoir of water, thus generating suddenly enough water to cause the explosion.