Vesuvius | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 21, 1872

Vesuvius.

PHYSICISTS have held a theory that the hidden forces of nature, which shake the earth with great convulsions, have long been gradually losing strength, and there is constantly less and less danger of the recurrence of such catastrophes as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon, or the volcanic outburst which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. Recent events must have imperiled their faith in their comfortable belief. Antioch has just been laid in ruins by one of the severest earthquakes of the century. A whole island in the Pacific was depopulated a few months ago by a similar catastrophe. And now Vesuvius bursts forth with extraordinary violence, and the people are flying in dismay from the villages along its foot. It is eighteen hundred years since the first recorded eruption of scoriæ and ashes from this mountain overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii, and eight hundred years since the flow of lava began which has continued at intervals ever since. Long before there was any written or traditional account of the phenomena, however, Vesuvius must have been vomiting forth the product of the central fires, for its own substance is of a volcanic character. The quantity of ashes thrown out by it in A. D. 79 exceeded its own bulk. In 1538 a volcanic cone called Monte Nuovo, a mile and a half in circumference, and 440 feet high, was raised by it in two days in the Bay of Baiæ. In 1631 it threw out torrents of lava and boiling water over the villages at its base. In 1779 it poured forth huge masses of thick, white, sulphurous smoke, three miles in height, and shot into them showers of stones, scoriæ and ashes, at least 2,000 feet high, and sheets of flame which ascended almost two and a half miles. When the town of Torre del Greco was destroyed, in 1794, it was calculated that a single stream of lava contained more than forty-six million cubic feet. When the same unfortunate place was ruined again, in 1861, fissures opened at various places in the side of the mountain, and the lava issuing from numerous craters united in a stream no less than twenty-five feet deep, reaching to the very roofs of the houses. One can hardly understand the indifference to danger which draws the wretched inhabitants back, time after time, to the villages which have repeatedly been swept by the burning torrent, and where the mutterings of the earth, the fissures emitting smoke and gas, and the scars of former catastrophes are such eloquent reminders of ever-present danger. Yet in the accounts of the present eruption, we find the names of the same towns and villages figure in the story of former devastations. The activity of the volcano began to attract crowds of tourists as early as the beginning of April, but it seems to have been only a few days ago that the phenomena became especially alarming. The most terrible features of such eruptions are all present. The violent explosions, the columns of flame shooting upward to an immense height, the showers of stones and ashes, new craters opening suddenly at unexpected places, the burning gases breaking out of the earth in the very midst of the villages, and worst of all, the dreadful flow of lava pouring down all sides of the mountains—such are details of the scene depicted in dispatches. The people are camping in fields, and Government is feeding them. Torre del Greco is deserted and once more in imminent danger. San Sebastiano and Massa di Somma have been ruined, and the deadly stream is advancing toward Portici, Cercola, San Giorgio and Ponticelli. The opening of new craters continues, but, fortunately,

with each of these outbreaks comes a perceptible diminution in the force of the of the whole eruption. Though the strong winds now threaten many towns hitherto considered sufficiently remote from danger, the general impression is that the worst is over. The extent of the destruction is, so far, much below that of some former years, and, unless the eruption shall largely increase, it will not compare with some of the greater catastrophes of history.—N. Y. Tribune.