The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1914-09-16
UNDER A VOLCANO
A Town That Lives In Perennial
Dread of Extinction.
C0LIMA'S CRATER IN ACTION.

It's Solemn Spectacle For the Dwell
era In the Shadow of the Gloomy
Peak When "old Faithful" ExpIodes.
90 1t Does Regularly Once Year.
It is singular how Indifferent 20 a
persistently threatened danger human
beings can become, even when the dan
ger is Of deadly nature and may
! imperil their very lives. Harry III.
Dunn, in the Montreal Herald and
Star, tells of case I'm which a whole
townful of people lie under the con-
start threat Of extinction by volcano.
The roof of the little boxllke hotel in
| Colima. capital OF the state OF Colima,
I'm Mexico. was freshly drenched with
water in a vain effort to fight off some
OF September's heat. think there were
eighteen of us gathered there in the
cool, gray night. The almost silent
town lay like black and white check
erboard at our feet.
/ Twenty miles away. across a valley
still green wis the rains Of summer.
rose a conicaI mountain, almost soil
tary. Even by night it looked sinister:
! lava coated sides. its gas exuding cone
Stunned even by the vultures which
| haunted mountain and plain. 1t was
| the volcano of Colima, the ''Old Faith
/ full of craters, which explodts regu-
/ larly once year-and it was almost
| due for an exhibition.
HE should begin soon. droned the
hotel keeper. Maybe today, maybe to-
morrow. maybe not for a week, but it
| is the middle of September. and IL is
| his time
The old man had scarcely finished
| when bubble. black as night. crowd
ed itself out of the broken end of the
mountain. which we knew was pot of
molten stone, twenty miles away. The
bubble. so dark that we could see it
| plainly. swelled like growing puffball
and then. pushed out from below. rose
like a giant umbrella. with incredible
speed. into the sky. Behind it came
straight tubular column of smoke. such
smoke as that of which the bubble was
made. black and thick and ominous.
Up. up, up. rose the bubble. riding. it
seemed. on the column below it 1t ap-
/ peared to hang like a huge blanket a
thousand feet in the heavens; then
slowly. like some great octopus feeling
It's way along the bed of the sea. the
bubble flattened and began to spread
out. Probably it moved miles every
minute, but it was far away and so
monstrous that we could not judge it
by ordinary standards.
It seemed that the town below us
heaved long sigh. The thing for
which its ten or twelve thousand in
habitants had been waiting was about
| to happen The mighty drama was
| about to be enacted before their eyes,
as 1t was before the Spanish conquis-
tadores set foot on Mexican soil. Yet
/ TO them the spectacle was ever excit-
ing. for its end might be death. might
be destruction of their town. as it had
been the destruction of the many small
er towns clustered more closely round
the skirts of the gloomy peak.
The roofs filed with people. Here
and there a woman screamed: many.
both men and women, prayed; queru-
lous cries and questions from children
/ rose on the night air, and the bells in
the churches began to ring. slowly at
/ first and then more rapidly. as the fire
god began to play about the crest of
Colima.
Like a waterspout on the crest of a
lofty roller at sea. the smoke column
| and it's spreading top rested for mo-
| ment on the volcano and then, with a
thunderous outrush of air. which must
have been heard for at least a hundred
miles. vanished into thin air. A col
umn of fire took their place.
No ordinary fire was this. No fame
ever kindled by human hands burned
SO white as that tower of luminous bits
OF lava and sand and stone and super
heated gases that shot upward from
the mouth of the crater.
gazed at it spellbound as the light
OF day spread round all over the valley
and the city. 4 constant roar came
from the volcano, a roar so insiStent.
so monotonous. that | could not hear
what the old hotel keeper who stood at
my elbow was saying. | bent my ear
to him and heard: Not so bad as last
year. Mayhap we shall not be harmed .