. ERUPTION OF TAAL VOLCANO. 81 



will be partly concealed as the new lake rises) . Its position and height 

 indicate that its top formed a part of the high ground shown on the 

 map of the old crater just west of Green Lake. Being more resistant, 

 it withstood the force of the eruption which tore out the looser material 

 around it, except on the side which the obelisk itself protected. This 

 specimen consequently is an entirely diiferent type from the spine which 

 pushed up from the crater of Mont Pelee during the year succeeding the 

 eruption of May, 1902. The latter with the fragniental cone which it 

 surmounted, actually grew about 900 meters high, apparently being pushed 

 up bodily from below.'® The new obelisk in the crater of Taal resembles 

 an old volcanic neck or plug, and such an origin might be assigned to it 

 from the evidence in hand. 



LOSS OF LIFE. 



The official report submitted by Colonel W. S. Elvers, Assistant 

 Director of the Bureau of Constabulary, who conducted the relief work 

 for the Taal sufferers, estimates the hmnan dead at 1,335. There were 

 recovered and buried 732 bodies. Of these, 106 were found on Volcano 

 Island and 618 along the west shore of Lake Bombon between the 

 harrios of Subig and Bayungan, inclusive. 



The magnitude of this eniption of Taal has been both exaggerated 

 and belittled. Consequently it is of interest to compare it briefly with 

 a great volcanic eruption. In ]\Iay, 1902, ]\Iont Pelee devestated an area 

 of 83 square kilometers (32 sqi;are miles), killed 30,000 people, and 

 spread ashes (in one direction at least) over a radius of 160 kilometers 

 (more than 100 miles). A large proportion of the ash which it threw 

 out was incandescent, burning and scorching vegetation and wooden" 

 structures. The crater of Mont Pelee is about 1,280 meters (4,200 

 feet) high. 



Eecently Taal exerted a devastating violence over an area of approxi- 

 mately 230 square kilometers (part of this area was lake surface; the land 

 surface devastated was about 98 square kilometers). The greatest dis- 

 tance from the volcano at which an appreciable depth of ash fell is about 

 52 kilometers, and the number of people killed is 1,335 (official esti- 

 mate). Thus Taal devastated a greater area than Pelee, yet it spread 

 its ash over an area probably less than one-tenth as large. This ap- 

 parent inconsistency is readily explained by the difference in elevation 

 of the respective craters. The barrio of Gulod is approxim^ately the same 

 distance from the crater of Taal as St. Vincent (where most of the losses 

 of life occurred) was from the crater of Mont Pelee, and, like St. Vincent, 

 was in the path of gTeatest violence of the eruption. In Gulod, 116 



='«Hovey, E. O.," New Cone and Obelisk of Mont Peleg, Rull Geol. Soc. An. 

 (1904), 15, 558. 



