The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1886-08-12
GRACE GREENWOOD.
TALKS ABOUT ETNA'S LITTLE
MOUNTAIN AND BAVARIA'S KING.

Sicily and Her Elemental Tragedies-The
SuperstitiOLA People of Iadrid-The
Late Wagn .r-SIad Monarch-The Fairy
Prince of the Nineteenth Century.
Especial Correspondence
MILAN, July 3, 1885, Etna, so long in
agonized labor, has brought forth, not a
mouse, but actually a little mountain, which
the Italian Alpine club, in session at Catania,
has solemnly christened Monte Gemellaro.
That great eruption, of exceptional length,
volume and violence, was horrible happen
ing, sufficiently near to us to cause popular
excitement, especially during the days and
nights while Nicolosi, town whose history is
series of distractions and reconstructions
was threatened with final overwhelming,
standing, as it were, at bay, with its awful
enemy drawing slowly and steadily higher
and higher. All watched at last with bated
breath-some praying, some betting. Would
the poor little city go under, or would it not!
Devout Catholics had hope as soon as they
heard that the bishop of Catania and a
goodly number of priests had gone to the re-
lief of the lava-beleaguered town, bearing
the veil of st. Agatha, which, it is said, once
saved Catania when similarly menaced.
Hosts of pious Sicilians believe that the shalx-
ing of that bit of muslin in the face of the fiery
torrent arrested it, and delivered Nicolosi
Nicolosi and other menaced towns have es-
capped this time, thanks to ST. Agatha; but
multitude of the poor peasants of the region
round about, driven from their ruined homes
and vineyards, have lost all their worldly pos
sessions, in some cases life, in many cases
reason. The correspondent of one of the
Milan evening journals gave particularly
vivid and sensational descriptions of the gran
deurs and terrors of the eruption, and of the
human tragedies attending it, so that for days
we "supped on horrors"
Since Etna ceased from troubling, there
has been the CHASTITY catastrophe of the sui
phur mine Of Marc, in which hundreds of poor
miners persisted through explosions, or in the
flames and suffocating fumes-the "fire and
birthstone" which, made of those yellow
caverns, seem to the poor wretches who did
not die speedily the very ante-chambers of
hell. Sicily seems this year to be the scene of
these elemental tragedies, as Spain was last
year, and as Ischia and Scio were few years
ago. All, we are so many and such restless
creatures, we swarm soon the old earth, that
it seems now and then to get impatient, and
like some huge pachydermous animal to
make mad bolt, shake its skin and fling a
lot of us off into the infinite void
So many of these calamities have lately
been visited upon Spain and its vicinity that
the superstitious people of Madrid take them
as solemn warnings, especially since their ex-
perience Of a regular wild American cyclone,
and are looking in pitiful alarm for the end
Of ha hot 10
tradition founded on prophecy of old Nos
tradamus, that untoward event should come
off in the year when st. Marks day falls on
Easter Sunday, and that of st. Antony on
that of Pentecost, and that of st. George on
Corpus Domine-all of which conjunctions
occur in this year of our Lord. If there is
really even to be such a day of confagration
and collapse as the Dies ire of prophets and
poets, we may take it that the mightiest vol
canic eruptions and earthquakes but family
foreshadow its horrors. Still fainter remind
ers are they of the stupendous work of the
Creator in forming and reforming and trans
forming this round world of ours. Before
time was, as we reckon it, the savage forces
of nature had fought out on this planet their
Titanic battles-the general war of lawless
elements, which was to establish the general
law of order. Then cavernous central depths
yawned and drank in great seas; then tidal
waves, that were like runaway seas, rushed
from zone to zone and overswept continents;
then mighty volcanic forces, fiery plowshares
of God, cleft the granite crust of the earth
and tossed up mountain ranges All this we
know, or think we do; but the thought of that
troubled season of auld lang syne does not
ipf hat 10
primordial commissions endured, and the poor
harassed globe struggled against, or by fire
and flood, to establish hospitable, habitable
conditions for "the coming man"-setting the
scenes for the drama of human life-though
tortured earth and sea might groan and
moan, there were no trembling mortal wit
nesses of the conflict and the uproar, no SEN
tient victims of the blind fury of the ele-
mentS.
1t is after all the human part played in
these tragedies of physical nature which
gives them not a browning horror, but a
grandeur beyond all that imagination can
assign to chaotic shocks and throes, overturn-
ings and subsidences. 1t is the sublimity of
human woe, What unspeakable consterna-
ton must prevail in a volcanic region during
a hard season of earthquakes 1t is night
mare of dreadful expectancy that the day
never breaks upon-a shadow of misfortune
and grief which no sun dissipates-the home
lessness of poor wretches whom heaven itself
seems to have elected.
But does the greater always contain the less,
or even balance it in this life? To the world
about us, the heaving and rumbling and lava
vomiting of Etna were of small account COM
pared with the outcries and spasms of the
French republic, over the Portuguese mar
rage, land the expulsion of the Pretenders-and
what were the beggaring, the distraction or
of few hundred peasants-what
we're cyclones let loose on and damaging a
Jew cities, to the bankruptcy and despair of
King, to the whrlwind of madness which at
asst burst on the royal house of Wittelsbach
md bore away its head. The excitement
lere, over this last event, was for a little
lime universal, though naturally the Italian
owes not over much the Teuton, and GER
ainly no event so CHASTITY, and at the same
lime so pathetic, has occurred among the
oval folk of Europe since the death of the |
prince imperial. 1t is strange that it took |
his suicide, coupled with a probable homi-
tide, to convince his subjects that the man |
Just entombed as grand monarch, with i'm
posing pomps and much Latin, was not fit to |
rule over the stupidest beer-drinking, beer
thinking Bavarian peasants. He ought to |
have been deposed and quietly disposed of in
,ome npSthetic Wapnerian mad house wears |