The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1879-06-26
THE ERuPTIONS OF ETNA.
An Account by Professor Silliman O
Visit to The Volcano I'm 1851.

An Account by Professor SilIiman of
Visit to The Volcano in 1851.
To the Editor OF the New York World:
WHAT Rome is to Italian history Ell
na is to the story of active volcanoes.
From the seventh century before the
Christian Ella Etna has record of &C.
tivity longer and more authentic than
that of any other volcano on the globe.
And yet geologically this historic
mountain has few claims to respect for
its antiquity, since it has been thrown
up from the sea in one of the most re-
cent of geological epochs.
The vigorous eruption which the
daily dispatches are now announcing
is the first since that of 1856, which in
point about five miles northeast of the
main cone of Etna, at a place now
known as Monte Frumonto, about six
Thousand five hundred feet above the
sea. From this new mouth lava flowed
at the rate of about mile day, di-
viding first into two streams. and by
March 10 this eruption had opened sew
en- mouths along line of several miles
to the southeast.
The present eruption Cor more prop
erly series of eruptions), so far as we
can determine from the imperfect data
at present available, promises to be
much more extended and disastrous
than that of 1865.
Few people who have not made a
study of the history of Etna (and fewer
still have visited and explored its Won
ders) have any adequate notion of
what it is in its vast extent and en-
crossing interest. That it is about ten
thousand eight hundred and seventy
feet high, and forms the one great con-
spicuous feature of the Island of Sicily,
every schoolboy knows. In all CLASH
Etna is frequent theme for poets and
mythology. Four hundred and seventy
yea b. c., Pindar, in his Rythian ode,
for Heiro of Etna, winner in the chariot
race, says: "He [Enceladus] is fast
bound by pillar of the sky even by
snowy Etna, nursing the whole year
her dazzling snow, whereout pure
springs of unapproachable fire are vOm-
tied from the Utmost depth. In the
daytime the lava stream pours forth a
lurid cloud of smoke, but in the dark
ness red, rolling flame sweepeth
rocks with uproar to the wide deep
sea-"
This vivid language is none too
strong to describe the devastation
which Etna has at intervals during
over twenty-five hundred years of re-
corded eruptions spread over her fer
tile plains and wooded slopes. Again
and again have Catania, Aci Reale and
other Sicilian towns been overwhelmed
and destroyed BY the vast discharges of
molten lavas which have encroached
even upon the sea, with great destruc-
ton of marine life. Not less than
three hundred thousand people dwell
in the forty towns upon the TANKS of
Etna, in an area of about five hundred
square miles.
Few districts in Europe are more
populOus. and none more productive in
a variety of the most valuable fruits of
the soil. The line of the base, marked
throughout large part of its circuit
by the rivers A!cantara and Simeto,
measures nearly ninety miles, and this
area is sharply divided into three
zones-the fertile, the wooded and the
desert, each characterized by features
suggested by these names.
The general aspect of the snowy Et-
ma has been made quite familiar to
lovers of art in America by the WE'LL
known picture of its cone and snow
clad TANKS painted by our lamented
country man, Thomas Cola picture
now preserved in the Wadsworth Gal
lery al Hartford. have stood on the
spot where Cole took his sketch for this
picture-on the edge of the ancient
Greek theater at Taurmana. distant as
the bee flies probably twenty five miles
from the cone. The scene is one not to
be forgotten, with the blue waters OF
the Mediterranean on the left and this
sublime cone piercing the skyline in
the middle distance.
l was then fresh from an excursion
to Etna in company with NV father.
whose life-dream had been that he
might see "the snowy Etna'' of which
he had SO often told the eloquent story.
His age did not permit him to ascend
to the great summit cone, but he had
zealously explored the minor cones
about Nicolosi and Zaftarana, and
these marvellous engulfments known al
the Val del Bove and the Val del Lone
l attempted the cone with compan.
Ion. and the following account of thi,
experience has now, by reason of it,
age, acquired the charm Of novelty