A STRANGE HAPPENING
DEAR BROTHER DAVIS,-- I wish to tell the readers of the TRUMPET of an event which transpired in this neighborhood (Merthyr) a few days ago.
On the 26th of December last I was in the company of the Apostle John Taylor, Williams Howells, Thomas Pugh and others, crossing Aberdare Mountain, the summit of which is about a mile and a half from Merthyr; and we placed four stones down (one opposite the other) near the top of the mountain as a remembrance of our having passed by. On the 28th I returned in the company of Brothers Taylor and Pugh, and we added four more stones to the others.
Now that which happened in that place on the 1st of February is worth noting. As two brethren were going up the mountain near the foot of the mountain, they met a man and a woman ruinnig back filled with fear. They said that the mountain was boiling up, and when it had risen to the bank several yards, they heard a sound like a cannon's roar. After hearing so much talk about the thing, I myself went in the company of two of the brethren to see the place, and that which we saw suprised us greatly. It had happened within two yards of the aforementioned stones. We saw that many hundreds of tons of earth had been blown about 250 yards and had left a crater about 120 yards long and from 15 to 20 yards wide and from one to two yards deep. Pieces of old oak in the ground had been blown away, about 6 feet long by 3 feet in diameter, and some of them so hard that they could not be broken or sawed, and the others were black and soft. There are varying opinions about the happening; some say that it was an earthquake, others that sulphur caused it and others that it was water. The place was mushy and soft no matter what caused it. But my opinion is that the whole thing was one of the signs of the latter days, and that many things similar to it will come to pass yet to testify that God is taking his work forward.
Yours in the truth,
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
Merthyr, February 11, 1851
[Translated from the Welsh original in Udgorn Seion, 1851, p. 67-8 by Ronald D. Dennis, 1529 W. 1170 North, Provo, Utah]
