The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1902-06-13
Barlow Man Writes Of Volcanoes
Earthquakes, Etc.
REVERTS TO ST. PIERRE CATASTROPHE
Says We Should Be Thankful that We
Live In a Section Secure From
Such calamltles-Tells Of
His School Days.

ternal and Internal things that are go
ing on in the bowels Of the earth. We
can see upward and outward for mil
lions and billions Of miles, but the in
side OF this little world is all unknown.
We live upon its crust and eat and
sleep and dance and prance and fight
and talk war and politics and trusts
with no thought Of how near we are
to the fires that are burning under
us nor when they will break out and
consume US all, as they certainly will
some time according to scripture.
Those internal fires have been burning
for thousands Of years, and the mystic
ny is, why they have not burned to
the surface long before this. Where
does the heat all go, and where are
the escapes-the chimneys-for smoke
and the ashes and lava? Surely these
few VOLCANOES can't discharge it all.
The word volcano, or vulcano, as it
used to be called comes from Vulcan,
the god of fire, and the ancients be-
lleved that the old fellow had his
shops and furnaces down there, and
sometimes when he blowed the bel
lows too hard the fire bursted out
through a hole in some mountain and
the melted rock spouted up and run
over the tank and washed down in
the form of lava, which is another Lat
In word, and means to wash. Volca-
noes are Vulcans chimneys and as
far back as we have history, sacred or
profane, these chimneys hate had
their periodic discharges. Some wri-
tiers believe that there was one Of
these not far from Sodom and Go
morrah, and those cities were de-
stroyed like Pompeii and Herculane-
UNI, or more recently like st. Pierre in
Martinique.
A few years ago two of my boys
Nook. sea voyage from New York to
Trinidad and stopped at all of these
little islands and historic points. They
told us Of Martinique, where the EN-
press Josephine was born and lived
until she was Is years old, and whose
beautiful monument they saw. I'm
happy lady! The world is still weep
ing for her. They climbed the heights
Of this same volcano and looked down
into its crater, for it was quiet and
peaceful and had not had an eruption
for fifty years. The island is small
very small, not quite as large as Bar
tow county but had a dense and mon
grel population of 100000 people
chiefly indians, negroes and Chinese.
The whites numbered less than 10000,
OF whom only 1900 were French. Just
think of it. Our county is about %
miles square and is quite thickly set
tied and has $4,000 people, while Mar
Unique had seven times as many and
most of them negroes. These negroes
were all slaves until 1848 They live
chiefly on fruit and anything they can
pick up or steal. My boys amused
themselves by throwing dimes into the
water that was from 20 to 80 feet deep
and the little negro boys would plunge
in and dive to the bottom for the mon
ey and always got it.
Then / got to Illuminating about
Vesuvius and Pompeii and Herculane-
um. l used to speak speech about
ancient Greece and Rome and Thebes,
and I always said Pompyeye and The
bees, for that was right then, and SO
was Sisero for Cicero, but they have
got new ways now, and | don't know
where / am at. Vesuyius has been cut
ting up for more than two thousand
years. 1t has had nine eruptions, but
there are still people living on It's
slopes and cultivating them. It's enor-
nous crater is two miles around and
1000 feet deep and the accumulated
lava sometimes raises its bring SOC
feet during an eruption.
When spartacus, the gladiator, was
beseiged by the Romans, he, with
his little army Of seventy men took
refuge in that crater, for 1t was quiet
then, and killed 5000 Romans who at
tackled them on its brink The great
orator, Cicero, had beautiful villa
at its base, but in the year IS A. D
old Vulcan fired up his furnace and
belched forth fire and smoke and lava
and ashes and buried those two cities
sixty-fve feet deep, and changed the
sea shore and the river so that their
sites could not be found and when
FOUND by accident they were two miles
inland. For three centuries excava
lions have been going on and Of late