WHAT A VOLCANO CAN DO.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3835, 13 April 1881, Page 1

WHAT A VOLCANO CAN DO.

Cotopaxi, in 1738, threw t Jts fiery rockets 3000 feet above its crater; while in 1754 the blazing mass, straggling for an outlet, roared so "that its awful roice was heard at a distance of more than 600 miles. In 1797 the crater of Tunguragua, one of the great peaks of the Andes, flung out torrents of mud, which dammed up the rivers, opened new lakes* and in valleys 1000 feet wide made deposits 600 feet deep. The stream front Vesuvius, which in 1837 passed through Torre del Greco, contained. 33,000.000 cubic feet of solid matter; and in 1793, when Torre del Gre^o was destroyed a second time, the mass 'of lava amounted to '45,000,000 cubic feet. In 1760, poured forth a flood whioh. covered, eighty-four square miles of 'surface';'' and measured 1,000,000,000 cubic feet. On this occasion the sand and scoria formed the Monte Bosini, near Nicholoaa, a cone of two miles in circumference, and 4000 feet high. The stream thrown out by JEtna in 1810 was in motion at the rate of a yard a day for nine months after the eruption; and it is on record that the lava of the same mountain, after a terrible eruption, was not thoroughly, cool and consolidated-ten years after the event. In the eruption of Vesuvius, a.i>., 79, the scoria and ashes vomited forth far exceeded the entire bulk of the mountain; while in 1660 JEtna disgorged more than twenty times its own mass. Vesuvius has sent its ashes as far as Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt; it hurled stones eight pounds in weight to Pompeii, a distance of six miles, where similar masses were tossed up 2000 feet above the summit. Cotapaxi ejected a block of 100 cubic yards in volume a distance of nine miles; and Sumbawa,. in 1815, during the most terrible eruption, on record, sent its ashes* as far as Java, a distance of 300 miles of surface, and out of a population of 12,000 souls only 20 escaped.—Weekly Journal;,