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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



began from a volcano near the capital of 

 the Island of the Great Sangir. . Some 

 thousands of people were killed and im- 

 mense quantities of ashes fell all over the 

 island. The noise of this eruption was 

 heard at Sandakan, 500 miles away. 



An eruption of Mount Etna began on 

 the nights of July 8 and 9, 1892, and 

 continued with more or less intensity all 

 the month. Occasional less severe out- 

 breaks occurred afterwards. The erup- 

 tion was notable for the enormous quan- 

 tities of smoke and sand emitted. 



But undoubtedly the greatest eruption 

 of this period occurred in northern Japan. 

 Bandai-San is a mountain about 5,800 

 feet high, which had shown no sign of 

 activity for about 1,100 years. A sub- 

 ordinate peak, called "Little Bandai- 

 San," arose on its northeastern side. On 

 the morning of July 15, 1888, "Little 

 Bandai-San" was blown completely into 

 the air and obliterated. The debris buried 

 and devastated an area of at least 30 

 square miles. An estimate based on the 

 depth of the debris in this area indicated 

 that the quantity of earth, rocks, and 

 volcanic material reached 700 million 

 tons, and that doubtless the true figure 

 would be much greater. About 600 

 people perished horribly and many more 

 were reduced to destitution. 



It was, with one possible exception, 

 the most terrible volcanic disaster which 

 had occurred in Japan since the famous 

 explosion of Asamayama in 1783. The 

 force of an explosion capable of tearing 

 a mountain to bits and distributing it 

 over an area of 30 square miles may 

 well have been sufficient to blow the 

 column of ashes high enough into the air 

 to have been carried over the earth like 

 those ejected from the crater of Kra- 

 katoa in 1883. 



the; devastation wrought by mont 



The town of St. Pierre, on the Island 

 of Martinique, was struck and totally 

 destroyed by two volcanic blasts of nearly 

 equal severity, occurring respectively on 

 May 8 and May 20, 1902. The loss of 

 life reached nearly 30,000 persons. The 

 volcano of Mont Pelee continued in ac- 

 tivity for a long time after these occa- 

 sions. An eruption of May 28, observed 

 by Mr. George Kennan, carried ejected 



matter up to a height estimated by Mr. 

 Kennan as exceeding 12,000 feet. 



It seems doubtful, however, whether 

 the eruption of Mont Pelee and the 

 nearly simultaneous one of Soufriere, on 

 St. Vincent Island, produced a widely 

 distributed haze in the atmosphere. 



On the one hand the measurements 

 made at the Astrophysical Observatory 

 of the Smithsonian Institution on the 

 transmission of the earth's atmosphere 

 in 1901, 1902, and 1903 show that dur- 

 ing the latter part of 1902 and the whole 

 of 1903 the transparency of the atmos- 

 phere was very decidedly low — below the 

 normal. On the other hand, however, a 

 measurement of the total intensity of the 

 solar radiation, made at this observatory 

 in Washington on October 15, 1902, gives 

 a value of the intensity of 1.40 calories 

 per sq. cm. per minute, which is among 

 the very highest observations of this kind 

 which have been made at this station. 



It is of course possible, though rather 

 unlikely, that the haze due to the erup- 

 tion of Mont Pelee was not so quickly 

 distributed toward the more northern lati- 

 tudes as that of Mount Katmai, in Alaska, 

 in 1912, was diffused toward more south- 

 erly ones ; so that perhaps the dust from 

 Mont Pelee reached Washington later 

 than October 15, 1902, 



THE WHOEE SIDE OB* THE MOUNTAIN 

 BEOWN AWAY 



On October 24, 1902, however, there 

 occurred the eruption of Santa Maria, in 

 Guatemala. The ashes from this volcano 

 covered an area of more than 125,000 

 square miles. Pumice stone and ashes 

 fell to a depth of 8 inches or more in a 

 region extending over about 2,500 square 

 miles, within which the houses and farm 

 buildings were crushed under the weight 

 of the ejected material and in some cases 

 totally destroyed. Six thousand persons 

 are believed to have been killed. 



The cloud from the volcano reached 

 18 miles in height, and the sound of the 

 explosion was heard at Costa Rica, 500 

 miles away. The whole side of the 

 mountain was hlozvn away, exposing a 

 cliff, nearly perpendicular, y,ooo feet in 

 height and forming a crater three-quar- 

 ters of a mile wide, seven-eighths of a 

 mile long, and 1,500 feet deep. 



