IN THE CRATER OF ETNA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 19 September 1924, Page 8

IN THE CRATER OF ETNA

A DARING DESCENT

A member. 1 of the Italian Adpine G 1 üb, Signor Barola, has undertaken a daring descent into the principal crater of Mount Etna (states the Observer’s Rome correspondent). He went alone, armed only with a thick stick, which was very necessary, as the surface of ashes had been turned by recent rain into a mass of slippery mud, on which it was very difficult to keep a footing. “I went carefully and'slowly,” says Signor Barolai, “testing the" ground with my stick at each step, and I managed at last to get down the steep sides of the crater. My progress was also hampered by evil-smelling volcanic ga6ses, which came up wherever there was a small fissure in the ground. At , the bottom of the crater I walked a. few yards quite easily upon what I discovered to be a mass of hardened snow, protected by a thiok strata of ashes. “I crawled down towards the mouth, which opeus almost in the centre of the crater, and loked in. The side® are very steep and inaccessible. The only way to penetrate into the inmost secrets of the volcano would be to com© with companions, and be let dojvn by ropes, a fascinating adventure, which I hope to undertake if 1 live and if the god of mountains protects me. From visible depths columns of irritating gasses were 1 continually belched forth, which made me cough badly. “1 drew back and looked around me. It was a beautiful and terrible sight. The gloomy walls of the crater rose up on all sides, splashed here and there by red and yellow patches, and lit up fantastically by the sunlight. The smoke rose up from the mouth in great curves, and spread itself about in the crater, hut, fortunately, nearly always in the opposite. direction to where I was standing. I raised my voice and repeatedly called out to my companion, whom T could just see above me on the edge of the crater, in order to try the famous echoes, which answered me like the growls of infernal deities. “I made my wav back more easily than I had come down, because T followed in the track of my former footsteps hut 1 had much difficulty in breathing, owing to the low atmospheric pressure and ra-rified air, and also to. the constant irritation of the volcanic gases.”