Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1886-06-25


Lord Bury sends the London Times an ex-
tract from a private letter describing the
eruption of Etna. The writer is engineer in
charge of the Palermo Oorleone Railway. His
letter ia dated Catania, May 2i:
After about three hours climbing we got
to within a couple of miles OF the crater it.
self. It is at the side of Etna, you know, not
near the top, that this eruption has broken
out and we got on to a bit of high ground
overlooking the whole scene. 1t was still
daylight when we got up there, so that we
saw the whole thing by daylight. 1t was the
most glorious and indescribable sight l ever
saw in my life. 1t is perfectly impossible to
describe it, as no one can have any conception
of what ii is like until they see it, and also
until they see it from where we did, which
was on high ground overlooking nearly the
whole of it, At the top Is this enormous
crater, throwing out flames and throwing up
stones some hundreds of yards, with con-
tinual roar, like any number of battles going
on, and Just below is another mouth from
which the lava comes, travelling at tremen-
dous pace. It divides into several streams
and follows the valleys. Now, imagine from
where we were that night, with our backs
to Catania what we saw. On our right this
enormous fame going hundreds Of feet into
the air, making the whole sky bright red, and
all down past us from our right, and extend
lava moving downward in a mass for miles,
and looking like an enormous sea of red hot
coke. The width across the lava where we
were was, perhaps, three or four miles, and
it started about two miles above us, so you
must imagine 8 sea af angry red-hot lava five
or six miles long, and three or four wide, and
about 30 or 40 feet deep, but all of it bright
red. You can judge whether it was sight
worth seeing. | would not have missed it
I i
people suppose, but consists of many millions
of large and small blocks of rocky looking
stuff rolling onward. We saw one huge rock
of old lava standing in the middle of the
stream of lava, which was divided by it and
ran around it; the rock was about the size of
| (say) Quidenham church, and this rock sud
denly split into two parts, the smaller halt
| was crumbled up and the other half was car
| ried bodily down with the stream slowly and
steadily. We watched it until we left and it
| moved about three quarters of a mile in about
three quarters Of an hour. We waited there
until nearly midnight, as We could not ven
ture down until the moon got up, and then
we reluctantly left this magnificent sight,
| which, as tell you, no description can give
you any idea Of As we went up we had all
gone into little house to see it aud walked
round it, and thought it was unpeasantly
close to the lava. WE'LL as we came down
TINS mousse was IN names anu caught ny Tue
stream. In many places we had to take differ
ent paths, so quickly had the lava spread as it
came down, and from below it is awful quite
close to it, to see this mass 80 or 10 feet high
coming slowly toward you. We were up
near the crater nearly four hours. We saw
other people go up to see the lower end of
the lava, stay there few minutes, aud go
down again; but the way to do it is to go
right high up, arriving by daylight, and then
stay there to see it by night and watch the
changes going on. 1t was glorious"