Thirty square miles of country were thus devastated."
In the devastated lowlands and buried villages below and on the slopes
of the mountain many lives were lost. From the survivors Mr. Norman
gathered some information, enabling him to describe the main features of
the catastrophe. We append a brief outline of his narrative:
MR. NORMAN'S NARRATIVE
"At a few minutes past 8 o'clock in the morning a frightful noise was
heard by the inhabitants of a village ten miles distant from the crater.
Some of them instinctively took to flight, but before they could run
much more than a hundred yards the light of day was suddenly changed
into a darkness more intense than that of midnight; a shower of blinding
hot ashes and sand poured down upon them; the ground was shaken with
earthquakes, and explosion followed explosion, the last being the most
violent of all. Many fugitives, as well as people in the houses, were
overwhelmed by the deluge of mud, none of the fugitives, when overtaken
by death, being more than two hundred yards from the village." From the
statements made by those fortunate enough to escape with their lives,
and from a personal examination of the ground, Mr. Norman inferred that
the mud must have been flung fully six miles through the air and then
have poured in a torrent along the ground for four miles further. All
this was done in less than five minutes, so that "millions of tons of
boiling mud were hurled over the country at the rate of two miles a
minute.
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