Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1876 — A Remarkable Eruption. [ARTICLE]

A Remarkable Eruption.

At the foot of Sugar-Eoaf Mountain, on the east aide of the Htidson, near the northern entrance to the Highlands, is the handsome summer residence of the Widow Wade. Opposite in the Hudson is Pollipell’s Island. The ground on which the Wade mansion is located ih 800 or 1,000 feet above the level of the river, the background being Sugar Loaf Mountain, 1,000 feet hijdier. A strange occurrence took place within a thousand ieet of the house yesterday afternoon. / While James McManus, the railroad flagman, was in the reek out north at three p. in., he heard a sipghlur noise, a sort of rattling or crackling. To use his own words: “I thought the Btorm King was tumbling.” Jn a minute afterward there was another rumbling and rattling louder than the first, almost Immediately followed by a third report. Said he: “I - have heard powder explosions and sharp claps of thunder, but I never beard such a noise as that." He ran .south to ascertain the cause, and found the railroad track for 500 feet covered with stones and bowlders, and sunflsh and perch. He looked up the hill and saw a hole 300 feet in width and fifty feet in depth, and from it fully 50,000 tons of dirt and sand had, to al’ appearances, been lifted up ami hurled into and across tlie cove.below. The cove is 500 feet in width, and the avalanche swept through it and over it to the Hudson River Railroad track, tearing down fences and covering the track six inches deep with stones, dirt and fish. Huge trees were hurled in every direction, and the water the entire length of the cove was disturbed. At seven o’clock in the evening there was another report, and another mass of earth was hurled to the cove below. A eight o’clock yesterday morning there were two more reports, and more dirt was displaced. What is stranger still, almost immediately after the last reports, a torrent of water burst from the bottom* of the cavern, from where the-earth had been hurled, and plunged down the side of the hill, cutting a ravine five feet deep in less than no time, and the volume of water is increasing hourly. When the fact is stated that there is no pond oi stream near the spot, except one a mile back of Sugar Loaf, the sudden appearance of so large a stream of water from the bottom of a cavern fifty feet below the surface of the ground is remarkable. Trees thirty feet in height were carried to a distance of 1,000 feet. Scores of people visited the spot to-day, but could not satisfactorily explain the occurrence. It was not a land-slide. It certainly looked like an eruption, for to all appearances the thousands of tons of earth must have been forced upward and outward to the cove below. The result of this upheaval can be easily seen from the Windows of passing trains. All around the chasm the ground was undisturbed except where the immense mass of earth stuck to it as it tumbled into the river. The indications are that »here will soon be another upheaval there, and the trackmen are watching the track closely. The occurrence has revealed tons of the finest sand where it was thought no sand existed. — Poughkeepsie (N. Y.) Cor.N. Y. Sun.