The Dickinson press., 1890-04-05
A JAPANESE
Terrific bunting of Nature's Gigantic su
terrAnean Y10l1Ar.

RSoSSAuA WHEN tHe Uay OaWueQ on June 10.
Columns of white steam floated dream
lily In the cool mountain air, as the in
valids repaired to their early bath, and
oil around was beautiful on that BRIGHT
summer morning when, ut 7:3O, there &C.
CURED an earthquake shock SO violent as
toleave no room for doubt that some mis-.
chief was brewing. Fifteen minutes later
this was followed by a second and vet
more severe shock. Another brief inter-
val OF about ten minutes and the earth
began to heave like a tossing sea, rising
and sinking so that houses collapsed, to.
tally wrecked, and people were violently
thrown down and became actually sick,
as if at sea. As standing was impossi-
BILE, they tried to crawl on all-fours to
whatever suggested shelter, but they
o O realized that all places were alike
unsafe.
The earthquake was Immediately fol-
owe by an appalling and unearthly
sound as of the roa of q thousand thun-
der claps, blending with the shrek of
all the steam whistles and roaring steam
boilers of earth, and ere the terrified and
deafened human beings could recall their
bewildereds senses they beheld the whole
mighty cone of o-Bandaisan blown
bodily into the air, where it overspread
the whole heavens with a vast, dense
pail of ashes and mud spray, blotting
out the light of day and turning all to
thick darkness. Ere these had time to
fall back to the earth there poured forth
dark clouds of vapor and such sitting
gases as we'll nigh choked all living crea-
lures. Then leaping tongues of internal
flame, crimson and purple, seemed to
flash right up to the heavens, and after
appalling earth throes were succeeded
by showers of red hot ashes, sulphur and
boiling water, accompanied by fearful
subterranean roaring and rumbling, and
by a rushing whirlwind of hurricane
force, uprooting great trees and hurting
them afar.
Another moment and there poured
forth floods of boiling liquid mud, which
swept down the mountain side with such
velocity that within a period ~variously
estimated at from ten to fifteen minutes
the scalding torrent was rushing past
the village of Nagasake, on the brink of
the Nagase river, having travelled ten
miles from the crater more rapidly than
any express train. Probably much of
this fluid mud was hurled direct through
the air, as was certainly the case with the
many hundreds of millions of tons which
were blown up at the first explosion.
Evidently the earthquake must have rent
somes ubterranean fissure, through which
a great volume of waters suddenly poured
into the internal fires, generating a stu
pendous volume of steam, which must
avecontinued to increase and SO become
more and more compressed as volcanic
fires and subterranean waters continued
their awful struggle, converting the
foundations of the mountain into a CYCLIC
pean boiler, which finally exploded, with
the result, a million times magnifed, of
the most awful boiler explosion ever
known above ground.
The commissions of the mountain rent
great chasms from which uprose Jets of
flame, ashes and boiling water, and many
Of the wretched fugitives were caught up
by these awful fountains and buried on
high with terrific force, to fall back to
earth all %blackened and boiled. Someof
these poor corpses were found caught on
the boughs of trees. scalded and mangled
beyond recognition. Others were bat
tered and crushed by the red hot stones
and rocks which had been hurled from
the crater to the clouds, and fell back to
earth with awful violence.
The eruption continued for about two
hours. By 10 a. m. its violence was
spent, though for hours afterwards the
ground trembled and quivered, as well
it might after SO appalling a fit of pas
sion. But in those two hours the whole
face of thirty square miles of country Tin
the form of a vast fan extending to a
radius five miles from the central crater)
was totally changed. OF the mountain
one thus suddenly transformed into a
steam boiler, there remains now only the
back; a ragged, overhanging precipice,
rising to sheer height, v%ariously esti-
mated at 600 or 1000 feet above a bot
tomless crater of about a mile in dame
ter. Thence, with ceaseless roar, rise
dense clouds of suffocating, sulphurous
steam, which sometimes clear off sufi-
GENTLY to allow adventurous climbers a
momentary glimpse of the seething mud
below. Those who have assembled that
remnant of the mountain from the slope
behind it, and SO have reached the brink
of that precipice, have beheld such a pic
ture of desolation as seems scarcely to
belong to this earth.
All that was Little Bandai now lies
outspread in a thick layer of horrid mud,
varying in depth from 10 to $50 feet
deep enough to efface every accustomed
feature in the whole area-and itself par
TALLY coated with layers of pale gray
ashes and black stones and rocks, which
seem to have been elected to such a
height as not to have fallen to earth I'M
til the awful mud wave had poured it.
self out. 1t is now described as a wild
chaos of earth, rock and mud, in some
place resembling the concrete blocks of
some %cyclopean breakwater, in others
rather suggesting a raging sea whose gi-
gantic waves have suddenly been con-
gealed. OF all that made the scene so
beautiful and pleasant not a vestige re-
mains-not a blade of grass where lately
the mountain was clothed with springy
turf, not a green leaf, not a sign of life
nothing but absolute d%esolation, with
a horrid smell rising from stagnant sui
phur pools.-Cornhill Magazine.
NATURE IN CONFUSION
Is terrific. Volcanic eruptions. cyclones, earth
quakes are awfully and tremendously pictur-
esque, but scarcely desirable to emulate in action
and effect by the administration Of remedies
which produce convulsiOn and agony in the alb
Normal nnrffnr n thu hrtvnn~ F-1-~1 Gal. =
the effect Of the old fashioned violent purgatives
happily falling more and more into disuse, and
of which Hostetter's Stomach Bitters is the
wholesome, pleasant and far more effective sue
cedancum. They weakened the intestines-the
Bitters invigorates them. They left the bowels
inactive, because incapacitated by ensuing feeble
poco Tba pft<oro n ~ Tho ort.n-