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Science: El Monstruo

3 minute read
TIME

“The greatest show on earth” (according to informed critics who have seen it) is now in the 20th month of an amazing run. Scene of the show is a Mexican plateau near the Pacific, 200 miles west of Mexico City. Paricutin, the new volcano which erupted from a cornfield, has grown to a mountain some 1,500 feet high and shows no signs of weakening. Natives call it El Monstruo. Belching 2,700 tons of fiery rock a minute, the crater has over-awed hundreds of tourists. At its more spectacular moments, spectators break into applause. One woman, after watching for a few minutes, broke into tears and hysteria. Hardened volcanologists, by their own account, have come away dazed and with knees shaking. Said Dr. William F. Foshag of the Smithsonian Institution: “It is, I believe, just as spectacular as Vesuvius ever was, and in its more violent phases it is better.”

The extraordinary impression Paricutin has made on scientists springs from its long, brilliant run and the fact that it is the first volcano they have been able to watch from birth. Last week, fresh from an expedition to it, Geologist Paul O. McGrew of the Chicago Natural History Museum made a scientific report on Paricutin. Said he, among other things: “This tremendous display was beyond all description. … On leaving this monster I felt as though I were leaving a World Series baseball game in the sixth inning with the score tied.”

El Monstruo broke out in a region which has had many previous eruptions.

On Feb. 20, 1943, one Dionisio Pulido, plowing his cornfield, suddenly felt the ground rumble and saw a great column of white smoke burst from the ground. He ran to the priest in the village of Paricutin, two miles away. By the time priest and villagers arrived, the crater was belching molten rock and lava. In a week it had raised a cone 500 feet high; in ten weeks, 1,000 feet. Then lava, erupting from the crater’s top and sides, began to ooze over the countryside.

Goodbye Parangaricutiro. A black, craggy pile, the moving lava constantly cracks chunks off its crust, exposing a gooey, glowing mass underneath (temperature: 1,994° F.). Its approach sets houses afire. Traveling about seven yards an hour, the glacier-like ooze has already spread more than seven miles and engulfed two villages—Paricutin and Parangaricutiro.

Meanwhile, over a radius of 35 miles, the crater has laid a blanket of ash, like black snow. It blackens people’s faces so they look like coal miners, crushes roofs, kills trees, in some places is piled to rooftop height. Near the base of the crater, where the scientists, keeping an eye out for falling bombs, have been working, steam and gas pours from deep holes (fumeroles) with red-hot sides. Said Dr. McGrew: “This seemed like a glance into Hades.” Though El Monstruo has spread terror among the Indian natives, birds and animals seem unperturbed, and spiders spin webs in the volcanic ash.

Volcanologists feel sure that when Paricutin burns itself out, as it eventually must, it will stay dead, like other old volcanoes in the vicinity. Then the cooling, mineral-laden lava will become extraordinarily fertile.

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