1th April.
Ir was only in last September that disastrous earthquakes in Calabria and Sicily drew the attention and sympathy of the whole world to Italy, and now all eyes are turned again in the same direction break "of Mount Vesuvius, The in consequence of the awful out-
cabled accounts, necessarily brief, which have reached us have been sufficiently graphic to enable us to realise, in some measure, the magnificance and the terror alike of the spectacle, but we have yet to await ils of the amount of destruction and misery caused and lives lost. Latest news would seem to indicate that the lence of the eruption has in some measure abated, but the experience of the somewhat frequent outbursts within the last two centuries is nob reassuring as to what may yet happen, The King of Italy, with that randy care for his people's welfare, which won all hearts when he passed through the stricken districts of the south last autumn, has hastened tu the scene of calamity, and his presence, as well as that of the Duke of Aosta, in command of the relief forces military and naval, will go far to encourage confidence among the terrified populace and prevent the possibili: ty of a general panic adding to the magnitude of the catastrophe itself, A yet greater impression will undoubtedly be made by the heroism of Queen Helena, who with His Majesty, and more courageous than the royal suite, has motored, through flying dust' and cinders right up to the lava stream. and dispensed food to the suffering villagers, The great eruption of A. D. 79, when the three towns of Pompeii Herculaneum, and Stabea were de-streed is such an outstanding event in the world's history and has been recorded so unforgetubly in litera-ure that other disasters wrought by the famous mountain are, by comparison, little remembered. Yet in the year 472 the eruption was so great that ashes were carried as far as Constantinople and caused alarm there; in 1538 the summit known as Monte Nuovo was forced up in two days to a height of 400 feet and with a circumference of 8,000 feet; and in December 1631 some 18,000 men, women, and children lost their lives in the torrents of lava and boiling water which swept down upon the villages at its base, From 1766 onward till 1822 there were eruptions more or less violent every few years, Sir William Hamilton, who was British Minister at Naples atthe time, has left on record a long and interesting de: cription of the great outbreak in 1779, when the mountain, after six months of more or lees preliminary warning, continued in great activity for five days, throwing up, first enormous volumes of white smoke, and then columns of fire which sometimes, rose to three times the height of the mountain itself. Fifteen years later, the greater part of the const town of Torre del Greco, whose inhabitants have again been driven from their homes on the present occasion, was overwhelmed, In 1822 in a single eruption Vesuvius lost about 800 feet of its height, and although this has been nearly all restored be subsequent changes, the vast el'iptical chasm, three miles in circumference and about 2,000 feet deep, which took the place of the former rough and rocky plain on the summit has remained with little alteration until now. There was another remarkable outbreak in May, 1855, when eleven cones were in active operation rt once and the discharge was so great that the total falling-in of the mountain was dreaded. Ihe village of Cercolo on the northern slope was destroyed at that time. For haifa century the volcano has remained gently innocuous and in 1880 the wire railway, which has now been swept away, was built for the convenience of visitors to the crater, An obser= vatory had also been erected on the western slope and this has perished.
The general appearance of the volcano with its twin summits of Somma and Vesuvius proper rising to a height of about 4,000 feet behind the bay of Naples, is'familiar to most of our readers. It may not be so generally known that the original height was probably twice as great, and that there is reason to believe that the upper half of the cone was blown away by n colossal eruption of which no historical record remains, No lava is known to have issued from the cone until the year 1066, and it was by ashes that Pompeii was buried for J,700 years, while its sister in misfortune, Herculaneum, has remained practically smothered until the present time under the flowing mud which overwhelmed it,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.