How A Volcano Erupts

was recently described by Commander Trevor Glenny in a broadcast talk on a visit he paid to the little island of Tanna, in the New Hebrides.

The volcano on Tanna is only 600 ft. high, but it took him more than an hour to climb it. “The crater was a huge round yellow cup. The sides fell steeply 300 ft. to a fiat round plain about the size of Kensington Round Pond. A narrow wall of yellow rock about 50 ft. high cut the plain in half. There were five blow holes in the plain—each looked about 30 ft. to 40 ft. in diameter —two blow-holes one side of the wall, three the other side.

In the holes white-hot lava seethed and bubbled and spat great white splashes high above the wall. The whole crater glowed like a bowl of fire . . . Then, miles away, came a very faint sound almost a sigh, that grew into a rumbling, louder and louder . . . The volcano began to tremble and sway about more and more. . . . Suddenly there would be a terrific roar. Out of two or three of the blow-holes huge slabs of flaming white hot rock would shoot up into the sky.

They seemed to hang there, minutes on end, rwo or three hundred feet above you.

Gradually they would cool, turn red and then come.down with a terrific ‘wump’ in clouds of dust on the opposite side of the crater. These rocks look like the bodies of great animals wrapped in flames.

Their glow lights up the Island, the lagoon and the sea beyond.” —Crown Colonist