Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1898 — DEATH IN ITS FLAMES. [ARTICLE]

DEATH IN ITS FLAMES.

Eruption of Vesuvius ’Threatens Destruction of Naples. Vesuvius, the greatest volcano in the world, is again in eruption, belching forth great masses of tire and molten lava, which threaten destruction to the city of Naples. Nine new craters have formpd within the past week around the central crater. The smoke, in a brownish yellow cloud, overhands The mountain like a great pall. The lava torrent is half a mile in width and divides into three principal streams, each seventy to eighty yards wide. These as they pour down the mountain side subdivide into numerous smaller streams, carrying death to everything living, and advancing at the rate of forty yards an hour. Lava in a volume of a thousand tons a minute pours out of the volcano. It has filled Vetrana valley, a deep ravine. The ashes lie several inches deep for a long distance down the sides of the mountain and in the adjacent villages. At night the volcano is splendidly awful. The crater belches forth a flame, which rends the pall of smoke, reaches to the heavens, and at times takes on the colors of the rainbow. The lights are reflected in the broad waters of the Bay of Naples, the loveliest in the world. Tremblings of the earth and subterranean explosions precede the outpourings of lava, and the wells on the mountain sides are beginning to dry up. A great stream of lava threatens to overwhelm the observatory built on that part of the volcano known as Monte Contaroni. This observatory is on a hill 2,200 feet above the sea level. This observatory was established for the purpose of giving warning of all eruptions to those living on the mountain. Vesuvius is eight miles from Naples, whose bay it overlooks, at the eastern extremity of a chain extending to the island of Ischia. It is believed that the whole gulf of Naples was once an immense crater, the northern end of a great rent in the earth’s crust. Aetna being the southern end and Stromboli about the middle. At its base Vesuvius is thirty miles in circumference. Its height varies after its eruptions, but the average is about 4,000 feet. Its great crater is some 2,000 feet in diameter and about 500 feet deep.