The culmination of the eruption came in the evening of April 7, when, to the accompaniment of light earthquakes felt as far as Naples, lava issued for the first time in great volume from a mouth more than halfway down the mountain side (Fig. 132 _f_), and thus began the drainage of the chimney. At about the same time with loud detonations a huge black cloud rose above the crater in connection with heavy explosions, and a rain of cinder was general in the region about the mountain but especially within the northeast quadrant. Those who were so fortunate as to be in Pompeii had a clear view of the mountain’s summit where red hot masses of lava were thrown far into the air. The direction of these projections was reported to have been not directly upward, but inclined toward the northeast quadrant of the mountain; but since with a northeast surface wind the heaviest deposit of ash and dust should have been upon the southwestern quadrant of the mountain, it is evident that the material was carried upward until it reached the contrary upper currents of the atmosphere, to be by them distributed. [Illustration: FIG. 133.—The ash curtain which had overhung Vesuvius lifting and disclosing the outlines of the mountain on April 10, 1911 (after De Lorenzo).] [Illustration: FIG. 134.—The central cone of Vesuvius as it appeared after the eruption of 1906, but with the earlier profile indicated. The truncation represents a lowering of the summit by some five hundred feet, with corresponding increase in the diameter of the crater (after Johnston-Lavis).] When the heavy curtain of ash, which now for a number of succeeding days overhung all the circum-Vesuvian country, began to lift (Fig. 133), it was seen that the summit of the cone had been truncated an average of some 500 feet (Fig. 134). All the slopes and much of the surrounding country had the aspect of being buried beneath a cocoa-colored snow of a depth to the northeastward of several feet, where it had drifted into all the hollow ways so as almost to efface them (Fig. 135). More than thrice as heavy as water, the weak roof timbers of the houses at the base of the mountain gave way beneath the added load upon them, thus making many victims. Inasmuch, however, as the ash-fall partakes of the same general characters as in eruptions from cinder cones, we may here give our attention especially to the streams of lava which issued upon the opposite flank of the mountain (Fig. 136). [Illustration: FIG. 135.—A sunken road filled with indrifted cocoa-colored ash from the Vesuvian eruption of 1906.] [Illustration: FIG. 136.—View of Vesuvius taken from the southwest during the waning stages of the eruption of 1906. In the middle distance may be discerned the several lava mouths aligned upon a fissure, and the courses of the streams which descend from them. In the foreground is the main lava stream with scoriaceous surface (after W. Prinz).]