WHAT A VOLCANO CAN DO.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue 92, 19 July 1881, Page 3

WHAT A VOLCANO CAN DO.

Cotopaxi, in 1758, threw its fiery rockets 3000 feet abovo its crater , while in 1754 the blazing mass struggling for an outlet, roared so that its awful voice was heard at a distance of mo*e than, six hundred miles In 1779 the crater of Tnnguragua, one of the great peaks of the Andes, flung out terrents of mud which damped up the l-ivers, opened tip new lakes, and in valloys 1000 feet wide made deposits 600 fpet deep. The stream from Vesuvius, which in 1787 passed through Tone del Givco, contained 33,000,000 cubic feet of

solid matter; and in 1793, when. Torre ffefe-Qrwa w A *s destroyed a \ second finite, the'massoflavaamounted j to 45,Q0p,0(^ cubjc ie(4. In 1760 ; JEtna poured fourth a flood 'which \ covered eighty-four square milefc of > surfaaa, aud measured nearly 1,000,- i 000,0.00 cubic feet. On thwlpecasiou the sand aud scoriuvfoi'med the Monte Rosiui, near a cone of two miles yi circumference, and 4000 feet j fwt higlu Thy stream thf.wn <>w by j iEtna in 1810 was in inn: ion at tlio ! rate of ai yard a day for niuo month 3 | after the erup'ion ; antHt is on record ' that tlie luvn of the same mountain, at" er h -"^rriu'lu" ■'crupiioiVj'' "was- motr not thoroughly 00l aud consolidated ten : years afier tha event. In the erup : tioii of Vesuvius A-r». 79, the scoria ] aud ashes vomited forth far exceeded the entire bulk of the moirain ; while m 16G0 -Efcua disgorged more than twenty tinias its own mass. Vesuvius has sent its ashes as tat* as ''onskintinoole, Syria, and Egypt ; it hurled sfconos ei-ilit pounds in weight to Pompeii, a distunes of six milfl- 0 , where similar masses were tossed up 0000 fee abuve the summit. Cotoj):ixi ojected a block of 100 cubic yaHs in volume a distance of Jiine. miles; and Suinbav.a, iti 18l. r >, dining the moss terrible eruption on record, sfint its ashes as far as Javn, a distance of 000 mi e.s of surface^ and out of a population of 12,000 souls only twenty e.-cmfnl.