VESUVIUS

Hokitika Guardian, 24 July 1929, Page 2

VESUVIUS

ITS FLAMING WRATH. NAPLES, June 4. Slowly and stealthily, with a dreadlid, implacable deliberation, like some mythical all-devouring monster lying in ambush among the rocky crags of Vesuvius’s slope, the lava stream to-day, after swa.lowing the small villages of Pagani and Avini, clutched the prosperous village of Terzigno in its flaming maw. One house after another, after trembling and swaying as if an effort to withstand the lava’s irrestible ilirust, went down with a loud crash of falling masonry, only to be completely submerged the next moment by the advancing stream of semi-liquid volcanic matter. About half Terzigno to-day is no more, and it is only a matter of hours before the remaining half will also be wiped out. a tragic scene. Only a very few people were left in Terzigno to-day to witness. the destruction of their village, all having fled or having been forced to leave the place by the police. When the lava stream leaned its tremendous bulk against the first house one old peasant stood alone in front of all the other onlookers, watching the destruction of his home with unbelieving eyes. Tears lined his bronzed, weather-beaten face and his shoulders were bent with grief. ■ He stood speechless, immobile, while bis bouse shook like a straw in the wind. Then, when it collapsed in sudden ruin, his knotted fists shot out heavenwards and his cracked old voice shouted unmeaning curses. He moved as if to throw himself against the sizzling wall of lava, to pit his pumiy strength against that nature gone wild, but was prevented by two carabineers who rushed upon him and led him away. Grief had made him completely mad. KNEELING IN PRAYER. •In another corner of. the village .wlierc the lava lias not yet penetrated a small group of villagers kneel on the bare earth before the image of the Immaculate Virgin, whose miraculous, powers, it is said, halted the. lava, in 17d4 at.iiie very door of theiri •village. Led by a wlute-surpliced priest with ■ uplifted arms, his eyes : fixed to heaven,, they intone their jpraver: “Abbira Vesuvii, Libera nos, iHomine.” (From the .wrath of Vesuvius deliver u«, oh Lord 1”) Here and there a few villagers move through the gloom created by the thick mantle of dust and ashes obscuring the suu carrying belongings forgotten in the first evacuation. Here one woman passes carrying on her head a small iron gate, prized who knows for what reason. Her tired eyes, which have not known sleep for many nights, are swimming with tears, amt grief and suffering are written large upon her face. There a small,boy totters under the weight of a ’plough. Over yonder a small group of men drag a pile of doors and windows on an improvised sled. Further still an old man, with wisps of white hair Escaping from under his greasy, dusty hat, makes' a hurried departure bearing a basket of strawberries grown, perhaps., in one of the fields now buried by the lava. The first deatli was reported today. A 70-years-old man who, despite all entreaties, insisted on spending the night on the threshold of his home a snort distance from the lava suddenly collapsed this morning. Carabineers went to his rescue, but when they at last reached him he was dead. Fortunately Professor Malladra, the director of the V'esuvinn Observatory, is able to report a decrease in the violence of the eruption. The lava covering the floor of the crater, lie says, has already completely blackened, except for a stream which is pouring down into the so-called “Valley of Hell.” Ashes fell to-day on Ottaiano, northeast of Vesuvius and north of Terzingo.