68 ART. 3. lî. KOTO : 



were counted from the 11th, 3 a.m., to the 12th noon. Most 

 people fled the day before, as already stated, to the nearest 

 mamland. Tlie coastal inhabitants knew very little about the im- 

 mediate danger that threatened them overhead from the top of the 

 mountain. No sooner did they see, at 10.5 a.m., a thread of white 

 clouds rising from the southern crater (Fig. 14« [1]) than they be- 

 took themselves on small crafts and departed from the island. 

 They and the few remaining people observed, at 10.10 a.m., black 

 clouds, this time dead calm and silent on the west (Yunohira vent) 

 followed soon after by the same black clouds on the east (Nabé- 

 yama vent). See Fig. 145 (3). 



A few minutes later masses of dense black clouds were 

 thrown out, simultaneously with terrible detonations, projectiles of 

 red-hot stones and sparks. The whole island was then enveloped 

 in dark ash clouds. This horri1)le state continued till 1 vmP with 

 ever-increasing fury when the ash clouds attained the maximum 

 height, which implied the climax of the ' explosion.' 

 ÏHK 12th, About 2 P.M., the last men were rescued on steam- 



launches from the city. A solitary policeman of Kuro- 

 kain of karni came late in the afternoon to ^Séto through a 



hailstorm of pumice, took with him four invalids on 

 some kind of raft, and rowed with difficulty through the sea of 

 floating pumice to the opposite coast (p. 01(2)). As the pumice 

 referred to was vesiculated young magma from the Nabé-yama 

 ventholes, but not the fragments of old lavas, the writer may be 

 justified in saying that the ' live ' lava was already in contact 

 with the atmosphere at about 2.30 r.:^!., as was the case from the 

 Yunohira vents or bocche. 



1) Ash and pumice eruptions began from this time and continued till noon of the 13tL. 

 The people on the Osumi coast say, the main ejections of lapilli and ash took place Ijet^veen 

 the 12th, 10.35 a.m. and the 1.3th, 4 a.m. The main i^roducers of lapilli were the eastern vents. 



