Some Eruptions.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 23, 5 June 1902, Page 18

Some Eruptions.

The man at the European end of the cable to the Antipodes is frequently as much astray with respect to his grammar as he is untrustworthy with respect to his ' f aots.' He told us on Monday that gas was escaping from a mountain between Genoa and Nice, said mountain having been 'quiescent' for centuries. This unfortunate mountain has apparently given up the attempt to become quiet. If ' quiescent' means anything, it means beginning to be quiet. The most rudimentary acquaintance with Latin tells the halting scholar that verbs which end in ' esco,' and so on, denote the beginning of an action, and are termed inceptive verbs. From Buoh roots we have a number of words such as convalescent (beginning to be well), senescent (beginning to be old), and bo on. In this class is quiescent, which simply means beginning to be quiet If, therefore, Mount Trabocchetto has been for centuries beginning to be quiet, we are justified in assuming that the subterranean foroes have grown tired of the effort, and have impatiently burst forth. Seriously, however, these subterranean forces seem particularly active justjust now. They are still rumbling and fuming under Martinique, and threaten to again convert those lovely islands into an inferno. years ago a similar calamity befell these islands, but it was of a leßi disastrous nature, only 700 people being killed. The equatorial and tropical regions are particularly unfortunate in this respect. In 1797, 40,000 people were buried in one moment in Central America. In 1812, Caracas was subjected to an eruption which killed 12,000. Peru and Ecuador saw about 25,000 people killed in 1868. In 1883 the island of Krakatoa in the Java group almoat entirely collapsed, with the loss of 35,000 livesand the dust furnished lurid sunsets for many months afterwards More reoently Amboyna, one of the Dutch West Indies, was visited by an earthquake, and 2000 persons perished. Altogether, history records Borne 200 or 300 disasters of the kind of the first magni - tude. The most memorable of these are as follow :—1693, Sicily. over 100,000 people killed ; 1703, Jedda. Japan, 200.000 persons killed ; 1731, Pekin, 100,000 people swallowed up