Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-06-16
The Eruption of EtRa.
AN EYE WITNESS, TWO MILES DISTANT, DE-
SCRIBEs THE SCENE.

Lord Bury sends to the London Times an
extract from private letter describing the
eruption of Etna The writer is engineer in
charge Of the Palermo Corleone railway. His
letter is dated Catania, May "a:
CATER about three hours climbing we got
to within couple of miles of the crater it.
self 1t 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 got up there, so that we saw
the whole thing by daylight. 1t was the most
glorious and INDISPENSABLE sight ever saw in
my life. 1t is perfectly impossible to de-
scribe it, as no one can have any conception
of what it 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 continual roar, like any number of
battles going on, and just below is another
mouth from which the Lava comes, travelling
at remendous pace. 1t divides into sew
eral 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 Dast us from our right, and
extending down miles to the left, streams of
red hot lava. moving downward in 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, and flowed some four miles or so below
w., SO you must imagine a sea of angry, red
hot lava five or six miles long and three or
& 10 and Oh. Co. L,,k
all f it bright red. You can judge whether
i, was sight worth seeing l would not
have missed it for worlds. The lava is not
liquid, as most 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 1t and ran around il; the rock was
about the size of, say, Quidenham church, and
this rock suddenly split into two parts,
the smaller half crumbled up and the
other half was carried bodily down
with the stream slowly and steadily We
watched it until we left, and it moved about
three-quarters of 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
any idea of. As we went up we had all gone
into little house to see it and walked round
it, and thought it was unpleasantly close to
the lava Well, as we came down this house
was in flames and caught by the stream. In
many places we had to take different 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 40 feet high COM
ing slowly toward you. We were up near the
crater nearly four hours. We saw other peo-
pie go up to see the lower end of the lava,
stay there few minutes, and go down again
but the way TO do it is to go right up, ar.
irving by daylight, and then stay there to see
II oy night and watch the changes going on. II
was glorious"