Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1879 — The Eruption of Mount AEtna. [ARTICLE]

The Eruption of Mount AEtna.

There have been seventy-eight eruptions of the volcano .Etna since the days of Pythagoras. The first recorded eruption occurred in the seventh century B. C., and eleven notable eruptions occurred between that date and the beginning of the Christian era. The most disastrous of the later eruptions were those of 1169, 1669, 1693, and 1852. In 1169 the city of Catania was destroyed by an earthquake incident to the eruption, and 15,000 lives were lost. In 1669 the lava destroyed twenty towns and villages, and flowed in a stream from two to three miles wide until it poured into the sea. Reaching the walls of- Catania, one stream of lava poured over- the wall, sixty feet high, into the city a fiery cascade of destruction. When the main current reached the sea the stream of lava was 600 yards broad and forty feet deep. The country for sixty miles around was covered with sand and ashes thrown from the craters. In 1693 fifty cities and towns were destroyed, and nearly 100,000 people lost their lives. The last eruption occurred in 1865, when seven new craters were formed on the northeast side of the mountain. The present eruption has beeu signalized by the opening of three new craters on the northern slope, and streams of lava are flowing down the western slope. The volcano, situated on the eastern seaboard of Sicily, has a circumference of ninety-one miles at the base, and covers an area of 480 square miles. There are on the mountain two cities and sixty-three towns and villages, and the population of the fertile districts is about 300,000. The cultivated region is about two miles wide on the north, east, and west, and nine or ten miles wide on the south. The main or great crater in the center is 10,867 feet above the level of the sea. but there have been hundreds of other openings within a radius of ten miles. In 1669 the lava flowed down the southern slope, or through the most populous valleys. The movement was rapid at first, but as the lava gradually cooled the progress was very slow. In twenty days the current moved thirteen miles. During the last twentythree days of its course it moved only two miles. Many of the lava currents cool without doing any damage, or before they reach the cultivated districts. In the eruption now in progress, the craters are near Randazzo, or near the foot of the mountain on the northern slope. The lava current is reportea as less than one hundred yards wide, and has moved a distance of about four miles. Messina, which, it is stated, has suffered from showers of cinders, is forty-five miles northeast of Mount /Etna. As many of the eruptions ' have extended over a period of several months, the outburst mentioned in the dispatches may be the beginning of a disastrous period, or, like the eruption of 1865, it may result in comparatively little damage. Later dispatches will probably indicate more satisfactorily the course of the lava stre*m. The principal towns of the northwestern slope are Bronte, Maletto, and Randazzo.