The Weiser signal. [volume] (Weiser, Idaho) 1890-1904, 1902-05-17
PUNY MAN!

lect has produced abroad oveI the
earth, wakes vain, and there gradu-
ally grows up a false sense of ON
impotence; he imagines himself pow
erful, he thinks he Is master of the
elements and his domain over all be-
meath the heavens undisputed
Then comes along one of these
sweeping horrors which snuff him
into oblivion as he would himself
tread upon an insect. Appalling and
frightful comes the catastrophe that
proves him to be as but the dry leaves
of the forest, whlrled and whisked
about by the gusts of fall This
modern Pompeii comes upon the
world with awful force. Back through
history are the traditions and evil
dences of rolling waves of chaos
which swept whole races away and
even left none to note the last bub-
bling groan that rose to the surface
of the sea of death. But all these.
grown dim in the lapse of time, are
as legendary lore stripped of acute
impressions and carrying the inter
est only of simple tale, until the
repetition in our own time brings
upon us full comprehension of all
the disastrous history.
Think of the tremendous story of
the Land of Mul A whole nation
of sixty-four million souls with all
their loves, hates and ambitions
swallowed in one upheaval of nature
eleven thousand five hundred years
ago, and only strange plates, discov-
cred ages afterward, left, from which
an mixing of their fate might be
traced Pompeii and Herculaneum
sleep in their beds of volcanic ashes
and the men and women, who were
the human habitats of the volupt
uous Roman luxury and passions of
the time, lie buried in their tomb of
lava, that engulfed it all in breath |
And, blasted and desolate, St. Pierre
forms another page of the great
record which no doubt will have other
pages added to the book when the
present races of earth shall have
faded into romance, as have the peo-
pie of Mu.
There Is striking similarity in
the story Of the Pelee eruption and
the destruction of Pompeii. The
description by eye witnesses at St
Pierre and the ancient accounts read
almost identically in details of the
rain of fire and mud and stones. the
tornado CT gasses, fire and steam
which swept in black cloud down
the mountain, bringing night and
death, the rush of lava which drove
the sea, boiling and seething, from
shore. Bulwer Lytton takes his &C
count from Dion Cassius and Pliny.
the Elder who is said TO have es-
capped from Pompeii in an open boat,
and may be taken as authentic. 1t
reads:
At that moment they felt the earth
shake beneath their feet the walls of the
theatre bled: and beyond, in the dis
lance, they heard the crash of falling
roofs; an instant more and the mountain
cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark
and rapid, like torrent; at the same time,
IT cast forth from its bosom shower of
ashes mixed with vast fragments of burn
ing stonel Over the crushing vines,-
over the desolate streets, over the am
phitheatre itself,-fa and wide, with
many splash in the agitated sea,-fell
that awful showerl
The cloud, which had scattered so deep
murkiness over the day, had now set
tied into a solid and impenetrable mass.
1t resembled less even the thic&est gloom
OF nightin the open air than the close
and blind darkness of some narrow room
But in proportion as the blackness gath
cred, did the llghtnings around Vesuvius
increase in their vivid and scorching glare.
Nor was their horrible beauty confined to
the usual hues of fire, no rainbow ever
rivalled their varying and prodlgal dyes.
Now brightly blue as the most azure
depth of southern sky--now of livid
and snakeike green, darling restlessly to
and fro as the folds of an enormous SER
pent-now Of lurid and intolerable
crimson, gushing forth through the col
umns of smoke, far and wide. and light
ing up the whole city from arch to arch
then suddenly dying into sickly pale
ness, like the ghost of their own lifel
In the pauses of the showers, you heard
the rumbling Of the earth beneath. and
the grooming waves of the tortured sea;
or lower still, and audible but to the
watch OF intentest fear, the grinding and
Kissing murmur of the escaping gases
through the chasms of the distant mount