MAGNIFICENT SPECTACLE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 11879, 15 January 1914, Page 5

MAGNIFICENT SPECTACLE.

TWO HUNDRED SHOCKS.

Vress Association—Electrio Telegraph—Copyright

TOKIO, Wednesday.

The Sakura-jima eruption commenced by enormous columns of smoke bursting from several points. Forty minutes* later there was an eruption at tho summit.

Houses on the east side of Sakurajima were tho first to get on fire. The surviving inhabitants thronged the beach. The police commandered lighters and took the refugees away. The heat waß intense. The sky was darkened with smoke. Seen from the mainland, the island presented a magnificent spectacle. It appeared to bo enveloped in flames, and tho brilliance was constantly enhanced by the eruptions from the crater.

Meanwhile, 70,000 persons at Kagoshima believed their homes were about to share the fate of the island. Hundreds of houses were destroyed, and the inhabitants killed and injured. Kagoshima was shaken by an earthquake every threo or five minutes.

Two hundred shocks wero registered on Sunday.

Asama is also active. Kirishima, thirty miles north of Kagoshima, is also causing devastation. There are seismic disturbances throughout Kyushyu province. Ngasaki, a hundred miles away, is covered with volcanic ash.

(Of the fifty-four volcanoes recognised as now active or only recently extinct in Japan, the best known is the graceful cone of tho sacred mountain of Fusi-yama, but others less pretentions aro far more dangerous. Sakura-jima, in Kagoshima Bay, 3743 feet high, is an island volcano, with several parasitic cones, now extinct, on tho north and east sides. At the summit are two deep craters, the southern of which emits steam. Grass grows, however, to the very edges of the crater. The island is celebrated for thermal springs, oranges, and daikon (radishes), which sometimes grow to a weight of 701b5.)