Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/600

582 fearfully, emitting huge stones to a considerable height, and the roar and tumult are terrible"; meanwhile the central crater on the summit of Etna continued to vomit great columns of steam and ashes. "On Sunday the eruption had greatly diminished, but on Monday morning it broke forth with great violence, and a fresh crater sent out a stream of lava one hundred and fifty metres wide and twenty-three deep, which flowed down at the rate of one hundred and sixty to one hundred and ninety feet an hour toward Nicolosi. On Monday evening the news was very disquieting. The violence of the eruption was then greatly increasing, and Nicolosi seemed doomed to destruction. The noise at a considerable distance is described as resembling a continuous cannonade." On the 19th Prof. Amico recorded ninety-two earthquakes; on the following day, only twenty; but afterward the number rose from twenty-five to thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-five, and finally to fifty-two on the 25th. The eruption reached its height on the 31st of May, and the people were so alarmed that the town was evacuated.

The great lava stream which threatened Nicolosi divided into two, one advancing toward Altarelli and the other descending on the east side of Monte Rosso, and on the od of June stopped within three hundred and seventy metres of the town, parting just behind a structure like that seen in the accompanying picture. The inhabitants affirm that this was in direct answer to the prayers of the clergy, who with their parishioners in solemn procession marched toward the advancing lava when the danger seemed most imminent.

According to Prof. Silvestri, the lava stream of 1886, like that of 1883, flowed from the rent or fissure which was opened in 1875 in the flank of the volcano, and extended in a northeast and southwest direction.

In the September following it was safe to visit the scene, and the Count L. dal Verme estimated that during the eruption Gemellaro ejected about sixty-six million cubic metres of eruptive matter, covering a space of five square kilometres and a half on the flank of the mountain, and approaching within less than half a mile of Nicolosi, situated near the upper limit of the vine. The vineyards were destroyed to the extent of some twenty thousand lire.

In 1890 M. Émile Chaix, of Geneva, ascended Mount Etna, camping out several days on or near its summit. From his bright and interesting account, entitled Une Course à l'Etna, originally contributed to the Journal de Geneve for September, 1890, we quote the following description of the crater of Gemellaro as it appeared the summer succeeding that in which we visited it:

"It still gives out a little sulphurous vapor, and is carpeted