The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1910-04-17

Palace Royal is quite overturned and
that the Vice-Roy had much adoe to es-
cape TO the Galleys 1t may be truly
said that Sicily is utterly laid waste as
also the Lower Calabria It's thought
that above a Hundred Thousand Persons
are destroyed IN this dismal Destruction
and Twenty thousand wounded
Queer Explanation of Causes.
but to speak one Word of the Causes
OF EN- (volcanies and earthQuakes) /
say there are Two which are Natural
The subterraneal Fires and the Wind are
the first Cause. The Bowels OF the Earth
are full of Mines of Coal, Sulphur and
Saitpeter; and when ii happens one Stone
falling upon another strikes Fire by Col
lision those combustible Matters being
Flame. they Cause most terrible over
turnings Of the Earth, unless they find
Outlets as in Etna and Vesuvius and 9TH
er Mountains of the same Nature.
1.-THE second natural Cause proceeds
from the Water that is under the Earth.
which. undermining the Foundations
that support the subter-aneal Vaults,
which extend themselves for several
Leagues together in several eEaI parts;
Props and overpressed by their own
weight, shrink down and all of q sud
den. impetuously pushing forward the
Air and Water, inclosed in the Earth,
give the upper parts those violent and
boystrous joits as quickly overturn the
weaker Structures of human Arts"
From that time until l7Q2, Etna was
quiet; in the latter year there was an
other outbreak About that date the
publication Of weekly newspaper began,
so there is a complete record from that
| time on. Since 1888 there have been
twenty-eight eruptions of Etna, the last
| prior to the recent one being in 1892.
Vesuvius has not had nearly so many
violent eruptions. but the most violent
were worse than those Of Etna In loss
of life and damage to property, due tc
| the fact that the slopes of Vesuvius were
and damage to property, due to the fact
| that the slopes Of VesuVius were more
densely populated. It is generally &C
| cepted that Vesuvius had been quiescen'
/ for centuries before the Christian era
The old Roman writer's In describing the
mountain tell Of the "calcined and fire
| scorched rocks on the slopes and sum
nit" Strabo, who lived and wrote a.
| the beginning of the Christian era, II
describing the mountain, wrote that Vesu
vius was a mountain clothed with lovely
vineyards and fertile pastures, only tina
there lay a large plain at the top GOV
cred with ashes and bearing no fruit ou
| full of wide holes, discovering room,
caverns where the rocks had been eater
cut by the fires"
Then came that terrible August "a. Z
A. D., when the cities OF Pcmpeii, Her
culaneum and Stabia, were overwhelmed
by the lava. Scientists are still exca
| waiting among the ruins of those citieI
| IN this year of our Lord, 1910.
Later Marcianus and Festus, Roman
| consuls write of the "torrid vomits'' o
"Vesevus." After their time there is lit
tie or no record Of activity on the par
Of the volcano for over thousand years
It is presumed that the volcano we be
lieved to be extinct from the fact tina
the people had covered its slopes as higl
as anything would grow with villages
vineyards and orchards. They had for
gotten-one can forget much in thou
sand years where there are no newspa
pers as reminders.
But they had a reminder in 1881,
reminder that swept 1900 Of them 4
horrible death. In referring to thi
in connection with the eruption of 1854
the Mercury for July of that year says:
This Internal chimney vomited up
great quantity of flame, accompanied b!
a torrent OF sulphur and a storm o
stones as thick as hail which buried al
adjoining town in ashes and burned o.
stif1ed all the inhabitants. However