Women
carrying their infants, crazed with terror, rushed along the eastward
roads. Men, deserting their homes, made hurried bundles of their most
precious belongings and set free their livestock, cows, sheep, pigs,
which fled in all directions. What disorder resulted from this
agglomeration, human and animal, under darkest night, amid forests,
threatened by the fires of the volcano, along the border of marshes
whose waters might be upheaved and overflow! With the earth itself
threatening to disappear from under the feet of the fugitives! Would
they be in time to save themselves, if a cascade of glowing lava came
rolling down the slope of the mountain across their route?
Nevertheless, some of the chief and shrewder farm owners were not
swept away in this mad flight, which they did their best to restrain.
Venturing within a mile of the mountain, they saw that the glare of
the flames was decreasing. In truth it hardly seemed that the region
was immediately menaced by any further upheaval. No stones were being
hurled into space; no torrent of lava was visible upon the slopes; no
rumblings rose from the ground. There was no further manifestation of
any seismic disturbance capable of overwhelming the land.
At length, the flight of the fugitives ceased at a distance where
they seemed secure from all danger.
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