The Ambrym Volcano.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 85, 31 March 1914, Page 5

The Ambrym Volcano.

"A MOUNTAIN OF ASHES."

THE NATIVES RETURNING. ! Further news of Ambrym Island, the volcano on which burst into violent eruption on December 6 and devastated the country" and the inhabitants near by, was brought to Sydney by the Makambo.

i The mountain when the vessel left [was' still in eruption, but is now only throwing out ashes and smoke—no lava or stones. There was no wind, and a great black pall, vast in its intensity and thickness, hung over the islands for a distance of 200 miles up the coast-line. Navigation is said to be very difficult, and in daylight the coast is only visible froni a distance of two miles.

| Captain Wetherall, of the MakamIbo, informed a Daily Telegraph reporter that there had been great changes since the eruption. Where the hospital once stood there was now a mountain of ashes 500 feet high. "One good thing the eruption has done," said the captain. "It has cleared the blight right off the cocoanut trees." As is usual in all snch circumstances, the natives are losing their terrors of the eruption, and are gradually coming back and settling down in their old habitations within 10 or 12 miles of the volcano. Fully 700 of the natives have gone back from Paaria Island, which lies just southward of Ambrym, and altogether, Captain Wetherall thinks, 1000 have returned now to the island.