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THE LIBRARY
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THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
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FROM THE FALL OF POMPEII TO THE
DESTRUCTION OF ST. PIERRE
WITH A FULL EXPLANATION IN LANGUAGE EASILY UNDERSTOOD OF THE CAUSES WHICH LEAD UP TO THESE MOST DISASTROUS AND
DESTRUCTIVE UPHEAVALS OF NATURE
A VIVID AND ACCURATE STORY OF THE AWFUL CALAMITY WHICH VISITED THE ISLANDS OF MARTINIQUE AND ST. VINCENT, MAY 8, 1902, AS TOLD BY EYE-WITNESSES AND
BY OUR SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE
GENERAL SAMUEL A. McALISTER
Consul of the United States at Barbados EDITED AND WRITTEN BY
CHARLES MORRIS, LL.D.
Member of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia and of the Academy of Natural Sciences and Author of many Valuable Treatises on Physical Phenomena
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTIONS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK
P
Entered accordir>g to Act oi Congress in the year 1902 by W. E. SCVLL. in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
All Rights Reserved
GREAT HISTORICAL DISASTERS
BY
VOLCANO AND EARTHQUAKE
B.C. 285— Japan, earthquake, 800 square miles engulfed, volcanic mountain formed.
A.D. 63 — Italy, earthquake, Pompeii and Hrrculaneum partly de- stroyed, large numbers killed.
A.D. 79 — Italy, volcanic eruption of Vesuvius, Pompeii and Hercu-
laneum buried. Most of their people killed. A.D. 526 — Antioch, earthquake, 250,000 killed. A.D. 893 — India, earthquake, 180,000 killed.
1 139 — Persia, earthquake, 100,000 killed.
1 170 — Sicily and Calabria, earthquake, 15,000 killed.
1456 — Kingdom of Naples, earthquake, 60,000 killed.
1531 — Lisbon, earthquake, 30,000 killed.
1693 — Sicily, earthquake, 93,000 killed.
1703 — Yeddo, earthquake, 190,000 killed.
1731 — Peking, earthquake, 95,000 killed.
1746 — Lima, earthquake, 1 8, OOO killed.
1755 — Lisbon, earthquake, 40, OOO killed.
1772 — ^Java, volcanic eruption, 3000 killed.
1773 — Guatemala, earthquake, 33,000 killed,
1783 — Calabria, earthquake, 40, OOO killed.
1783 — Iceland, volcanic eruption, 10,000 killed.
1797 — Riobamba, Ecuador, earthquake, 4 1,000 killed.
1812 — Caracas, earthquake, 10,000 killed.
1815 — Island of Sumbawa, volcanic eruption, 12, OOO killed.
1822 — Aleppo, earthquake, 120,000 killed.
1822 — Java, volcanic eruption, 4000 killed.
1853 — Shiraz, Persia, earthquake, 12,000 killed.
1854 — San Salvador, Guatemala, earthquake, 5000 killed.
1857 — Kingdom of Naples, earthquake, 30,000 killed.
1859 — Quito, earthquake, city destroyed, few lives lost.
1861 — Mendoza, South America, earthquake, 10,000 killed.
1868 — Ecuador and Peru, earthquake, 20,000 killed.
1883^Krakatoa, volcanic eruption, 36,000 killed.
1886 — Charleston, earthquake, few lives lost.
1891 — Island of Hondo, Japan, earthquake, 10, OOO killed.
1894 — Venezuela, earthquake, 3000 killed.
1902 — Guatemala, earthquake, 2000 killed.
1902 — St. Pierre, Martinique, volcanic eruption, 30, OOO killed,
1902 — Island of St. Vincent, volcanic eruption, 1600 killed.
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THE HOME OF LUXURY
A Typical Hume of the Wealthy in the West Indies. A Sketch by Our Artist,
PREFACE.
TACITUS relates how the palaces and noble residences of the beautiful ancient city of Pompeii were buried in ashes fathoms deep when Vesuvius awoke in its wrath ; and sacred history reveals the fate of the doomed Cities of the Plain when a rain of fire and brimstone poured down upon their spires and domes. No record of the past comes to us in more appalling form than these stories of sudden ruin and terrible slaughter by the elemental powers of the underworld. But once again, in our own days, these powers have awakened, and death and destruction have been showered down upon the tropical city of St, Pierre, the Pompeii of modern times. Dreadful as were the disasters of the past, this frightful calamity of the present surpasses them all in suddenness and fury. For days the ashes of Vesuvius rained down upon the famed Roman city before its destruction was com- plete, but minutes sufficed for the total overthrow of the fated West Indian city and the hurling into the valley of death of its thirty thousand doomed inhabitants. Here is a record of ruin never equalled in the history of volcanic fury, and one that should live in the memory of man as long as has that of the Roman city of summer palaces or of Sodom and Gomorrah, far remote in time. Dreadful is the work that follows the clashing of sinking seas with the lakes of liquid fire pent up in the earth. Rack and
ruin attend their meeting, and the dense solid shell of the earth is
ix
X PREFACE
rent asunder by their might. It is to the battle of fire and water in the depths of the rocks that the volcano and the earthquake are due, and when these demons of the depths are at war man's puny strength is as powerless as that of the leaf before the cyclone. Then terror comes ; then the earth trembles to its heart and is rent in twain ; then the ashes of a terrible burning are cast forth to bury fertile plains and flourishing cities; then showers of burning rocks bombard the air and rivers of elowinof lava scorch the earth, and human hopes and the results of man's labor are whelmed alike beneath the dread torrent of death and dismay.
In ruined St. Pierre a myriad of dead were left entombed in fiery lava and grey volcanic ash, while the few trembling fugitives wandered homeless and hopeless, with bereavement tugging at their heart-strings and famine dogging their errant footsteps. No human power could restore the vanished island landscapes nor bring back life to the charred cinders of what were once strong men and noble women. All that the benevolent world could do was to send quick relief to the starving fugitives and give fitting sepulture to the bodies of the dead, while offering up fervent prayers to the Almighty to stay the pent-up powers of the earth and save man from a renewal of such death-dealing calamities as that which befel the fair city of the tropic isles.
Mankind should not soon forget this dread disaster that has horrified the world. Nothing that has happened in modern times so amply deserves to be put upon record and thus kept for present and future generations to read. The man and woman who are not vitally interested in this story of terror can have no red blood in their veins, no human feeling in their hearts. That it may not be soon forgotten and its dread events rests as a shapeless horror in our thoughts, this story of its intensely stirring incidents has been
PREFACE xi
written. It is a story that should be read far and wide throughout the land and the memory of the terrible disaster thus fitly pre- served. It is no work of the imagination of man that we present, no wild flight of fancy into the realms of the terrible and the appalling, but sober fact and actual history ; but yet more thrilling in its details than anything that fiction could well invent. Bulwer, in his " Last Days of Pompeii," surrounds the fall of the Roman city with all the glamour of a story of the imagination, but for the record of the " Last Days of St. Pierre " sober truth will suffice ; fiction could add no new interest to its dread details.
The fate of Martinique and St. Vincent cannot fail to awaken a desire to learn of the work of the volcano and the earthquake, those terrible sisters, in all times and all lands ; the ruin caused by the far-famed Vesuvius and Etna ; the fricrhtful work of East Indian Krakatoa ; the terrible slaughter done by the quaking earth in fifty far-removed regions; the horrors that have widely enveloped mankind when the demonic furies of the earth's deeps went forth "conquering and to conquer," treading the nations beneath their iron feet and leaving leacrues of land a desolation and a curse.
The ruin of St. Pierre has served us as a text for many another tale of destructive fury in past and recent ages and far and near places. All the greatest convulsions of the earth are here recorded, all those terrible phenomena of nature which have made man almost fear to set his foot upon the earth, lest he might waken the demons sleeping far below. The whole story is one replete with pictures of the strength and force of the elemental powers, before which the power of man is like that of a fragment of driftwood borne on the ocean billows in their wrath.
We present here the record of the work of the dread sisters, from the tale of Pompeii down to that of St. Pierre. No one can read it
xu
PREFACE
without a deep sense of awe and a feeling of the instabiHty of man's works and the insecurity of human life. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and it is also more absorbing and thought- compelling when the truth is not that of the petty details of every- day life, but the vast events that come to us once in a generation. Such is the truth that is recorded in this book. Read it and be convinced.
MAP SHOWING RELATIVE LOCATIONS AND DISTANCES OF THE ISLANDS OF MARTINIQUE AND ST. VINCENT FROM THE AMERICAN CONTINENT.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
THE VOLCANO AND THE EARTHQUAKE, EARTH'S DEMONS
OF DESTRUCTION 17
CHAPTER II. THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGION 29
CHAPTER III. THE ISLAND OF MARTINIQUE AND THE CITY OF ST. PIERRE 39
CHAPTER IV. MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 50
CHAPTER V. AN ISLAND IN RUINS AND THE WORK OF RESCUE .... 85
CHAPTER VI. ST. VINCENT ISLAND AND MONT SOUFRIERE IN 1812 . . . 105
CHAPTER VII.
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT 116
xiii
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII. THR SYMPATHY AND AID OF THK UNITED STATES .... 141
CHAPTER IX. A VIVID PICTURE OF THE EAST DAYS OF ST. PIERRE ... 154
CHAPTER X. ST. PIERRE BEFORE AND AFTER ITS FAEE 168
CHAPTER XI. EXPERIENCES ON BARBADOS AND ST. VINCENT 185
CHAPTER XII.
EXPERIENCES IN MARTINIQUE DURING AND AFTER THE
DESTRUCTION OF ST. PIERRE 189
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GUATEMALAN EARTHQUAKES AND THE NICARAGUAN
CANAE - 202
CHAPTER XIV. THE ACTIVE VOECANOES OF THE EARTH 213
CHAPTER XV.
UNDERGROUND WATERS AND THEIR RELATION TO VOE- CANOES 225
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FAMOUS VESUVIUS AND THE DESTRUCTION OF POM- PEII 236
TABLE OF CONTENTS xv
CHAPTER XVII ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS, ETNA AND STROMBOLI 255
CHAPTER XVIII.
SKAPTUR JOKUI.I. AND HECLA, THE GREAT ICELANDIC
VOLCANOES 277
CHAPTER XIX.
VOLCANOES OF THE PHILIPPINES AND OTHER PACIFIC
ISLANDS 285
CHAPTER XX.
THE WONDERFUL HAWAIIAN CRATERS AND KILAUEA'S
LAKE OF FIRE 304
CHAPTER XXI.
THE VOLCANOES OF SOUTH AMERICA AND THE WEST
AFRICAN ISLANDS 321
CHAPTER XXII.
POPOCATEPETL AND OTHER VOLCANOES OF MEXICO AND
CENTRAL AMERICA 332
CHAPTER XXIII. THE TERRIBLE ERUPTION OF KRAKATOA 340
CHAPTER XXIV.
SUBMARINE VOLCANOES AND THEIR WORK OF ISLAND
BUILDING 357
xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXV. MUD VOLCANOES, GEYSERS AND HOT SPRINGS 367
CHAPTER XXVI. THE THEORIES OF VOLCANIC AND EARTHQUAKE ACTION 383
CHAPTER XXVII. THE GREAT LISBON AND CALABRIAN EARTHQUAKES . .. 404
• ' CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CHARLESTON AND OTHER EARTHQUAKES OF THE
UNITED STATES 4^5
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE VERDICT OF SCIENCE ON MONT PELEE AND LA
SOUFRIERE 425
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CHAPTER I.
The Volcano and the Earthquake, Earth's Demons of Destruction.
To most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this terres- trial sphere is quite a comfortable place of residence. The forces of Nature everywhere and at all times surround us, forces capable, if loosened from their bonds, of bringing death and destruction to man and the work of his hands. But usually they are mild and beneficent in their action, not agents of destruction and lords of elemental misrule. The air, without whose presence we could not survive a minute, is usually a pleasant companion, now resting about us in soft calm, now passing by in mild breezes. The alternation of summer and winter is to us generally an agreeable relief from the monotony of a uniform climate. The variation from sunlight to cloud, from dry weather to rainfall, is equally viewed as a pleasant escape from the weariness of too great fixity of natural conditions. The change from day to night, from hours of activity to hours of slumber, are other agreeable variations in the events of our daily life. In short, a great pendulum seems to be swinging above us, held in Nature's kindly hand, and adapting its movements to our best good and highest enjoyment.
But has Nature, — if we are justified in personifying the laws
and forces of the universe, — has mother Nature really our pleasure
and benefit in mind, or does she merely suffer us to enjoy life like
so many summer insects, until she is in the mood to sweep us like
a 17
i8 EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
leaves from her path ? It must seem the latter to many of the inhabitants of the earth, especially to the dwellers In certain ill- conditioned regions. For all the beneficent powers above named may at a moment's notice change to destructive ones.
THE WIND IS A DEMON IN CHAINS
The wind, for instance, is a demon in chains. At times it breaks its fetters and rushes on in mad fury, rending and destroy- ing, and sweeping such trifles as cities and those who dwell therein to common ruin. Sunshine and rain are subject to like wild caprices. The sun may pour down burning rays for weeks and months together, scorching the fertile fields, drying up the life- giving streams, bringing famine and misery to lands of plenty and comfort, almost making the blood to boil in our veins. Its an- tithesis, the rainstorm, is at times a still more terrible visitant. From the dense clouds pour frightful floods, rushing down the lofty hills, sweeping over fertile plains, overflowing broad river valleys, and, wherever they go, leaving terror and death in their path. We may say the same of the alternation of the seasons. Summer, while looked forward to with joyous anticipation, may bring us only suf- fering by its too ardent grasp ; and winter, often welcomed with like pleasurable anticipations, may prove a period of terror from cold and destitution.
Such is the make-up of the world in which we live, such the vagaries of the forces which surround us. But those enumerated are not the whole. Can we say, with a stamp of the foot upon the solid earth, " Here at least I have something I can trust ; let the winds blow and the rains descend, let the summer scorch and the winter chill, the good earth still stands firm beneath me, aqd of it at least I am sure?"
EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION 19
Who says so speaks hastily and heedlessly, for the earth can show itself as unstable as the air, and our solid footing become as insecure as the deck of a ship laboring in a storm at sea. The powers of the atmosphere, great as they are and mighty for destruction as they may become, are at times surpassed by those which abide within the earth, deep laid in the so-called everlasting rocks, slum- bering often through generations, but at any time likely to awaken in wrath, to lift the earth into quaking billows like those of the sea, or pour forth torrents of liquid fire that How in glowing and burn- inor rivers over leagues of ruined land. Such is the earth with which we have to deal, such the ruthless powers of nature that spread around us and lurk beneath us, such the terrific forces which only bide their time to break forth and sweep too-confident man from the earth's smilingf face.
THE SUBTERRANEAN POWERS
The subterranean powers here spoken of, those we had de- nominated earth's demons of destruction, are the volcano and the earthquake, the great moulding forces of the earth, tearing down to rebuild, rending to reconstitute, and in this elemental work often bringing ruin to man's boasted fanes and palaces.
No one who has ever seen a volcano or " burning mountain" casting forth steam, huge red-hot stones, smoke, cinders and lava, can possibly forget the grandeur of the spectacle. At night it is doubly terrible, when the darkness shows the red-hot lava rolling in glowing streams down the mountain's side. At times, indeed, the volcano is quiet, and only a little smoke curls from its top. Even this may cease, and the once burning summit may be covered over with trees and grass, like any other hill. But deep down in the earth the gases and pent-up steam,are ever preparing to force their
20 ' EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
way upward through the mountain, and to carry with them dis- solved rocks, and the stones which block their passage. Some- times, while all is calm and beautiful on the mountains, suddenly deep-sounding noises are heard, the ground shakes, and a vast torrent tears its way through the bowels of the volcano, and is flung hundreds of feet high in the air, and, falling again to the earth, destroys every living thing for miles around.
It is the same with the earthquake as with the volcano. The surface of the earth is never quite still. Tremors are constantly passing onward which can be distinguished by delicate instruments, but only rarely are these of sufficient force to become noticeable, except by instrumental means. At intervals, however, the power beneath the surface raises the ground in long, billow-like motions, before which, when of violent character, no edifice or human habita- tion can for a moment stand. The earth is frequently rent asunder, great fissures and cavities being formed. The course of rivers is changed and the waters are swallowed up by fissures rent in the surface, while ruin impends in a thousand forms. The cities become death pits and the cultivated fields are buried beneath floods of liquid mud. Fortunately these convulsions, alike of the earthquake and volcano, are comparative rarities and are confined to limited regions of the earth's surface. What do we know of those deep-lying powers, those vast buried forces dwelling in uneasy isolation beneath our feet ? With all our science we are but a step beyond the ancients, to whom these were the Titans, great rebel giants whom Jupiter overthrew and bound under the burning mountains, and whose throes of agony shook the earth in quaking convulsions. To us the volcanic crater is the mouth from which comes the fiery breath of demon powers which dwell far down in the earth's crust. The Titans themselves were dwarfs beside these
EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION ■ 21
mighty agents of destruction whose domain extends for thousands of miles beneath the earth's surface and which in their convulsions shake whole continents at once. Such was the case in 18 12, when the eruption of Mont Soufriere on St. Vincent, as told in a later chapter, formed merely the closing event in a series of earthquakes which had made themselves felt under thousands of miles of land.
ANCIENT AWE OF VOLCANOES
In olden times volcanoes were regarded with superstitious awe, and it would have been considered highly impious to make any investigation of their actions. We are told by Virgil that Mt. Etna marks the spot where the gods in their anger buried Enceladus, one of the rebellious giants. To our myth-making ancestors one of the volcanoes of the Mediterranean, set on a small island of the Lipa group, was the workshop of Vulcan, the god of fire, within whose depths he forged the thunderbolts of the gods. From below came sounds as of a mighty hammer on a vast anvil. Through the mountain vent came the black smoke and lurid elow from the fires of Vulcan's forge. This old myth is in many respects more con- sonant with the facts of nature than myths usually are. In agree- ment with the theory of its internal forces, the mountain in question was given the name of Volcano. To-day it is scarcely known at all, but its name clings to all the fire-breathing mountains of the earth.
As before said, at the present day we are little in advance of the ancients in actual knowledge of what is going on so far beneath our feet. We speak of forces where they spoke of fettered giants, but can only form theories where they formed myths. Is the earth's centre made up of liquid fire ? Does its rock crust resemble the thick ice crust on the Arctic Seas, or is the earth, as later
22 EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
scientists believe, solid to the core? Is it heated so fiercely, miles below our feet, that at every release of pressure the solid rock bursts into molten lava? Is the steam from the contact of under- ground rivers and deep-lying fires the origin of the terrible rending powers of the volcano's depths ? Truly we can answer none of these questions with assurance, and can only guess and conjecture from the few facts open to us what lies concealed far beneath.
RARITY OF ANCIENT ACCOUNTS
In the history of earthquakes nothing is more remarkable than the extreme fewness of those recorded before the beginning of the Christian era, in comparison with those that have been registered since that time. It is to be borne in mind, however, that before the birth of Christ only a small portion of the globe was inhabited by those likely to make a record of natural events. The vast apparent increase in the number of earthquakes in recent times is owing to a greater knowledge of the earth's surface and to the spread of civil- ization over lands once inhabited by savages. The same is to be said of volcanic eruptions, which also have apparently increased greatly since the beginning of the Christian era. There may possi- bly have been a natural increase in these phenomena, but this is hardly probable, the change being more likely due to the increase in the number of observers.
The structure of a volcano is very different from that of other mountains, really consisting of layers of lava and volcanic ashes, alternating with each other and all sloping away from the center. These elevations, in fact, are formed in a different manner from ordinary mountains. The latter have been uplifted by the influence of pressure in the interior of the earth, but the volcano is an immediate result of the explosive force of which we have spoken, the mountain
EAR TH ' 5 DEMONS OE DES TR UCTION 2 3
being gradually built up by the lava and other materials which it has flung up from below. In this way mountains of immense height and remarkable regularity have been formed. Mount Orizabo, near the City of Mexico, for instance, is a remarkably regular cone, undoubtedly formed in this way, and the same may be said of Mount Mayon, on the Island of Luzon.
In many cases the irregularity of the volcano is due to subse- quent action of its forces, which may blow the mountain itself to pieces. In the case of Krakatoa, in the East Indies, for instance, the whole mountain was rent into fragments, which were flung as dust miles high into the air. The main point we wish to indicate is that volcanoes are never formed by ordinary elevating forces and that they differ in this way from all other mountains. On the con- trary, they have been piled up like rubbish heaps, resembling the small mountains of coal dust near the mouths of anthracite mines.
It is to the burning heat of the earth's crust and the influence of pressure, and more largely to the influx of water to the molten rocks which lie miles below the surface, that these convulsions of nature are due. Water, on reaching these overheated strata, explodes into volumes of steam, and if there is no free vent to the surface, it is apt to rend the very mountain asunder in its efforts to escape. Such is supposed to have been the case in the eruption of Krakatoa, and was probably the case also in the recent case of Mt. Pelee.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF ERUPTIONS
If we should seek to give a general description of volcanic eruptions, it would be in some such words as follows : An eruption is usually preceded by earthquakes which affect the whole sur- rounding country, and associated with which are underground explo- sions that seem like the sound of distant artillery. The mountain
24 EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
quivers with internal convulsions, due to the efforts of its confined forces to find an opening. The drying up of wells and disappear- ance of springs are apt to take place, the water sinking downward through cracks newly made in the rocks. Finally the fierce un- chained energy rends an opening through the crater and an eruption begins. It comes usually with a terrible burst that shakes the mountain to its foundation ; explosions following rapidly and with increasing violence, while steam issues and mounts upward in a lofty column. The steam and escaping gases in their fierce outbreaks hurl up into the air great quantities of solid rock torn from the sides of the opening. The huge blocks, meeting each other in their rise and fall, are gradually broken and ground into minute fragments, forming dust or so.-called ashes, often of extreme fineness, and in such quantities as frequently to blot out the light of the sun. There is another way in which a great deal of volcanic dust is made ; the lava is full of steam, which in its expansion tears the molten rock into atoms, often converting it into the finest dust.
The eruption of Mt. Skaptar, in Iceland, in 1783, sent up such volumes of dust that the atmosphere was loaded with it for months, and it was carried to' the northern part of Scotland, 600 miles away, in such quantities as to destroy the crops. During the eruption of Tomboro, in the East Indies, in 181 5, so great was the quantity of dust thrown up that it caused darkness at midday in Java 300 miles away and covered the ground to a depth of several inches. Float- ing pumice formed a layer on the ocean surface two and a half feet in thickness, through which vessels had difficulty in forcing their way.
The steam which rises in large volumes into the air may be- come suddenly condensed with the chill of the upper atmosphere and fall as rain, torrents of which often follow an eruption. The rain, falling throug^h the clouds of volcanic dust, bring-s it to the
EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION 25
earth as liquid mud, which pours in thick streams down the sides of the mountain. The torrents of flowing mud are sometimes on such a great scale that large towns, as in the instance of the great city of Herculaneum, may be completely buried beneath them. Over this city the mud accumulated to the depth of over 70 feet. In addition to these phenomena, molten lava often flows from the lip of the crater, occasionally in vast quantities. In the Icelandic erup- tion of 1783 the lava streams were so great in quantity as to fill river gorges 600 ft. deep and 200 ft. wide, and to extend over an open plain to a distance of 12 to 15 miles, forming lakes of lava 100 feet deep. The volcanoes of Hawaii often send forth streams of lava which cover an area of over 100 square miles to a great depth.
GREAT OUTFLOWS OF LAVA
In the course of ages lava outflows of this kind have built up in Hawaii a volcanic mountain estimated to contain enough material to cover the whole of the United States w4th a layer of rock 50 feet deep. These great outflows of lava are not confined to mountains, but take place now and then from openings in the ground, or from long cracks in the surface rocks. Occasionally great eruptions have taken place beneath the ocean's surface, throwing up material in sufficient quantity to orm new islands.
The formation of mud is not confined to the method given, but great quantities of this plastic material flow at times from volcanic craters. In the year 1691 Imbaburu, one of the peaks of the Andes, sent out floods of mud which contained dead fish in such abund- ance that their decay caused a fever in the vicinity. The volcanoes of Java have often buried large tracts of fertile country under volcanic mud.
26 EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
An observation of volcanoes shows us that they have three well marked phases of action. The first of these is the state of permanent eruption, as in case of the volcano of Stromboli in the Mediterranean. This state is not a dangerous one, since the steam, escaping continually, acts as a safety valve. The second stage is one of milder activity with an occasional somewhat violent erup- tion ; this is apt to be dangerous, though not often very greatly so. The safety valve is partly out of order. The third phase is one in which long periods of repose, sometimes lasting for centuries, are followed by eruptions of intense energy. These are often of extreme violence and cause widespread destruction. In this case the safety valve has failed to work and the boiler bursts.
OFTEN REST FOR LONG TERMS OF YEARS
Such are the general features of action in the vast powers which dwell deep beneath the surface, harmless in most parts of the earth, frightfully perilous in others. Yet even here they often rest for long terms of years in seeming apathy, until men gather above their lurking places in multitudes, heedless or ignorant of the sleeping demons that bide their time below. Their time is sure to come, after years, perhaps after centuries. Suddenly tha solid earth begins to tremble and quake ; roars as of one of the buried giants of old strike all men with dread ; then, with a fierce convulsion, a mountain is rent in twain and vast torrents of steam, burning rock, and blinding dust are hurled far upward into the air, to fall again and bury cities, perhaps, with all their inhabitants in indiscriminate ruin and death. A thrilling instance of this is that which came upon the beautiful West Indian Island of Martinique in May, 1902, the story of which it is our purpose to relate.
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CHAPTER II.
The Volcanoes of the West Indian Regions.
THE volcanic outburst in the Caribbean Islands, which has so astonished the world, can hardly have been a matter of sur- prise for any geologist. In truth it should have been ex- pected, although nobody could have predicted the time when it would occur, or the exact point that would be most affected, nor, indeed, the extent of the disaster. Our knowledge of the earth^s crust is too incomplete for that.
Still the character of the chain of islands runnino- southward from Guadeloupe and forming the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea was well enough understood to enable any geologist to affirm the existence of danger there. That line is notoriously one of the danger points of the earth. Within a distance of a very few hundred miles are ranged three or four volcanic vents whose ap- pearance and history show that they are fully the rivals of Vesu- vius in destructive power. Being situated on islands, and conse- quently surrounded on all sides by water, they have the proper environment to induce an outbreak whenever other circumstances are favorable to such an occurence.
Moreover, the Caribbean Sea bottom is subject to earthquake
disturbances, which are, perhaps, the direct result of the slow
rising of the neighboring coast of South America. Wherever
such an elevation is in progress a strain is necessarily brought to
bear upon the rocks composing the underlying strata of the earth's
29
30 THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS
crust in the vicinity of the rising area, and every now and then a sudden slip, or break, is certain to occur, resulting in the formation of new fissures and the transmission of shocks which may act like the pulling of a trigger in releasing pent-up forces of vast magni- tude.
Leeward and Windward are the names given by mariners to the islands comp)rising the Lesser Antilles, lying to the southeast of San Domingo and Porto Rico, including Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique to the north or Leeward, and Barbados, St. Lucia, Saint Vincent, Grenadine, Grenada and others to the south, called the Windward group. These islands are of volcanic origin, and many of them possess occasionally active volcanoes. They are looked upon as forming part of that great volcanic range which extends along the Pacific slope of America from Alaska to Chili.
THE FRENCH WEST INDIES
Of the islands named, Martinique and Guadeloupe belong to the French ; the others are English possessions. Martinique, the central scene of the catastrophe that is threatening all of the islands of the Lesser Antilles, was a prosperous colony. It had, previous to the late disaster, a population of about 175,000, including about 10,000 white persons. The natives have been called by Lafcadio Hearn, the author, who spent two years among them, "the finest mixed race in the West Indies," The women are beautiful and the men tall, well formed and strong.
Of the 4,500 inhabitants of the island of St. Lucia not more than 2,000 are white. The majority of the white residents are French or of French origin. The natives are negroes and half- breeds of all shades of color, from full black to the nearly white octoroons. The original inhabitants were Caribs when Columbus
THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS 31
discovered the island in 1502. It was settled by the English in 1639. There were many struggles between the French and the English for its possession, first one power, then another, governing the island until 1803, when i^ passed finally under British authority. Two cone-shaped rocks rise out of the sea to a height of 3,000 feet, and near these are the craters of the long extinct volcanoes that now have entered upon a dangerous activity. Near them are the sulphur pits so often seen in mountains of the West Indies, that often send forth steam, reminding the visitors that the subterranean fires have never been entirely extinguished.
ST. VINCENT AND ITS CAPITAL
At the northwest corner of the island of St. Vincent, one of the British West Indies, rises the volcano La Soufriere, that now threatens its destruction. It has often belched forth death to the inhabitants, but of late years has shown no signs of activity.
On the northeast corner, across the bay, and a few miles away from La Soufriere, is Kingstown, the capital of the island, with a population of about 6,000. The others of the 35,000 souls living on the island, which is only seventeen miles long, inhabit the moun- tains, and it is upon them that the present disaster will fall most heavily. Nearly all of the inhabitants are negroes or half-breeds. About 4,000 whites live on the island.
The population of Dominica is about 35,000. The capital is Roseau. The island is twenty-nine miles long and sixteen miles in width. Its surface is covered by volcanic rocks, and hot sulphur springs abound.
Grenada is one of the most beautiful of the West Indian is- lands. Its mountains of volcanic origin, rugged and higher than those of the other islands, traverse it from north to south. It has a population of about 65,000.
32 THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS
Guadeloupe is really two islands — that to the north, or Guade- loupe proper, being mountainous and wild. The southern island is low and marshy. The population of the island is about 135,000. It is one of the principal French colonies in the West Indies.
Trinidad, a partly volcanic island, which lies south of the An- tilles, is famous for its lake of semi-liquid pitch or asphaltum — one of the most remarkable of natural productions.
THE THEORY OF TIDAL STRAIN
There are some scientists who ascribe the catastrophe to the tidal strain produced by the moon, which happened on the very day of the blowing up of Mont Pelee to be in conjunction with the sun and close to its perigee point, or point of nearest approach to the earth.
It is well known that in such circumstances the combined tidal power of the sun and moon has nearly its greatest value, this producing the highest tides, those known as spring tides. While the effect upon the crust of the earth must be relatively slight, yet it might be conceived to act in the manner of the pressure that causes a trigger to fall and thereby let loose the giant force stored up in a cannon.
It should be said, however, with regard to the theory that earthquakes and volcanic phenomena connected with them are more liable to occur v/hen the moon is in conjunction or opposition to the sun than at other times, all efforts to find a satisfactory basis for the theory in the history of seismic phenomena have been here- tofore unsuccessful. The evidence, in other words, is self-contra- dictory. Not long ago Mr. Egmetis, of the observatory at Athens, Greece, made public a report bearing on this question, and show- ing that it had been impossible to trace a connection between the positions of the moon and the hundreds of earthquake tremors felt
THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS 33
in Greece during the year 1900. But, on the other hand, the fact that the Martinique explosion occurred at new moon, and when the moon was nearly in perigee, may be taken, as far as it goes, as an instance in favor of the theory.
But whatever the remote causes of the outburst may have been, it is dif^cult to believe that the immediate cause can have been anything else than a gigantic explosion of steam in the bowels of the volcano. It is known that water penetrates to con- siderable depths in the earth, even in the middle of continents. Wherever crevices and caverns in the rocks exist water is to be found deep beneath the surface of the earth. Huge streams that may almost be described as rivers flow deep under some of the dry and barren lava fields and semi-deserts of the far West. Every farmer who drives a well to procure water for his stock where no surface streams exist has a practical acquaintance with the wonderful veining of the earth's crust with hidden water channels.
This water penetrates as deep as the gradually increasing heat of the planet will permit it to do while retaining the liquid form. If it encounters no excessively heated area of rocks capable of sud- denly turning a great quantity of it into steam it causes no damages, and if slowly vaporized recondenses into water again before it reaches the surface.
THE EFFECT OF STEAM IN VOLCANIC ACTION
But when, as occurs at many points near the edges of the ocean basins — and, among other places, on the eastern side of the Caribbean Sea — the water that has leaked down from above, either from rivers or from the superincumbent seas, encounters deep cracks and fissures which allow it to penetrate to a region where the heat is sufificient to liquefy solid bodies, it is changed into
superheated steam — a thing whose resistless power defies the 3
34 THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS
misfhtiest bonds ; and if the fissures are of considerable extent and the quantity of water is also great, even the rocky crust of the globe cannot withstand the explosive energy that is thus brought to bear upon It. This action and influence of subterranean waters will be found considered more at length in a later chapter.
But, it may be asked, why do not such explosions take place anywhere, at random, instead of through the crater of an existing volcano ? The reply is that sometimes they do take place at ran- dom, if such an expression can properly be applied to a natural event, and when that happens we see the phenomenon of the formation of a new volcano. But ordinarily the explosion occurs through the vent, or throat, of an already existing volcano, because the weakest points, or lines, in the earth's crust are the places where new fissures are likely to be formed, and along these lines of weakness the volcanoes stand like rows of safety valves.
Such a fissure is believed to exist along the curving course of the Caribbean Islands, the fact being indicated by their general volcanic origin and the line of volcanoes which follow this remark- ably regular crescent-like curve. Each island of this chain, begin- ning with Saba in the north and ending with Grenada in the south, is volcanic in character, and the chord of the arc they describe is about 360 miles in length.
THE REMAINS OF A LOST CONTINENT
Lying along the northern curve, oceanward, is a fragmentary chain of isles and islets which are coralline in structure — at least above the sea, though they may be erected upon volcanic bases far beneath. Each island is practically a single mountain thrown up from the ocean depths, the altitudes varying from 2,000 to 5,000 feet, and so evidently of volcanic origin that one may not err in
THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS 35
ascribing them to Vulcan's mighty hand. Mountain-tops, spires, pinnacles, thrust up through the sea, suggest the remains of a lost continent, or perhaps the beginnings of a newer one. A far-west Atlantis may yet appear, out of the debris of wrecked isles, a resur- rected continent, lifting its head above the sea, and verifying the Platonian legend.
Should these islands be destroyed, and, in effect, disappear, one cannot conceive of their places being taken by any more beau- tiful ones. As every mountain shoots upward abruptly to an altitude that gives it practically the range of two climatic zones, temperate and tropical, every beautiful aspect of vegetation may be noted here. The sides of each partially submerged volcano, from base to peak, and even some of the crater-walls, are hung with richest tapes- tries in varying shades of green.
INDUBITABLE EVIDENCE OF VOLCANIC ACTION
The northernmost of the volcanic islands is Saba, a mountain rising above the ocean floor nobody knows how many thousand feet, but extending about 2,800 feet above water. It has been for many years a Dutch possession, and is the smallest property of Holland in the West Indies, perhaps in the world, having an area of about seven square miles only, and supporting not more than 1,800 inhabitants. The majority of the population is white, a rare thing in these islands. There are Dutch residents in other West Indian islands, but they are not the sturdy, clear-complexioned Dutch of Saba Island. The secret of their sturdiness and their healthfulness is found in the altitude at which they live ; not one of them less than 800 or 900 feet above sea level.
The town of Bottom, 960 feet above the sea, where most of the people live, is so called because it lies at the bottom of an
36 THE VOLCANOES OP THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS
extinct crater ; at least, it is supposed to be extinct, but this, as recent events have shown, is not too sure a thing to trust to in the West Indies.
Indubitable evidence of volcanic action is to be found in the vast deposits of crude sulphur, which is mined out of the cliffs hundreds of feet above the sea and sent down to vessels' holds by means of a wire tramway. As there is no harbor in Saba, so' there is no roadway for vehicle or beast of burden, all the freight arriving there and all the produce shipped thence being carried on the backs of men and women.
Next neighbor to Saba is the Dutch island of Saint Eustatius, better known in that region as Statia. It has seen better days, but could not be more beautiful, at least so far as its mountain cone is concerned, which is about 1,500 feet in height and perfectly sym- metrical. Its crater is covered with gigantic forest trees. Statia was once very wealthy, but is now poor and forgotten, though it is celebrated as the first place in which a foreign Power saluted the American flag. It has no harbor, only a roadstead.
SEVERAL VOLCANIC ISLANDS
Of these islands none is more attractive from the sea than Saint Kitts, named by Columbus after his patron saint, Christopher. He discovered it, as indeed all these islands of the northern Carib- bees, in the year 1493. This island was the original home of the buccaneers. Off its leeward coast a great naval battle was fought between English and French. Across a narrow channel rises the symmetrical peak of Nevis, which, like Mount Misery on St. Kitts, is forest-clad and with a fertile, verdant belt around it. Nevis was the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, and here Lord Nelson was mar- ied. Next south of Nevis lies Montserrat, smaller yet, and between
'^S^^^^^f^S^i^
CATHEDRAL, ST. PIERRE This was one of the Prominent Kdifices of the City.
THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS 37
the two islands the great rock of Redonda, a pinnacle shooting up out of the sea. Montserrat has a fine crater or " soufriere," and before it was devastated by a hurricane a few years ago was covered with groves of limes. Nevis has no well-defined crater, but has numerous hot and mineral springs.
The island next southerly, Guadeloupe, is the largest of the volcanic chain. It was discovered by Columbus on his second voyage, in 1493, and he, like all voyagers who have come after him, was enamored of its scenery, speaking enthusiastically of its mag- nificent forests and waterfalls. The town of Basse Terre on the coast line has an open roadstead, while Point-a-Pitre, the commer- cial port, has a fairly good harbor. In 1843 Guadeloupe had its disaster, not in the form of a volcanic eruption, but of an earth- quake of destructive force, 5,000 lives being lost in Point-a-Pitre alone, while devastation extended widely over the island.
Dominica, about thirty miles south of Guadeloupe, is the most picturesque of the chain, containing grand and gloomy mountains, deep gorges, extensive forests, waterfalls, hot springs, a "boiling lake " in its crater, and many wonders of the faunal and botanical world. Dominica's only good harbor, that of Prince Ruperts, is unused on account of the insalubrity of the adjacent country, while Roseau, the commercial port, is an open roadstead. Mont Diab- lotin in Dominica is the highest peak of the chain, exceeding 5,000 feet.
Martinique, the next in the chain, calls for no description here, the following chapter being devoted to it. In Martinique and St. Lucia, but not in Dominica, next north of Martinique, is found that terribly venomous serpent, the " fer de lance," which is evil enough to have been the product of the particular Vulcan that forged the thunderbolts cast by Pelee at the devoted city of St. Pierre. More
38 THE VOLCANOES OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIONS
than one of those who escaped from the flames may have met death from the poison fangs of this serpent as they sought succor after the eruption or groped their way bHndly through the suffocat- ing fumes and ashes to a place of safety.
THE ISLAND OF ST. LUCIA
Saint Lucia is but another Martinique on a smaller scale. It has a "Soufriere," or sulphur mine, larger than that in the crater of Mont Pelee, but situated at, or near, the southern end of the island, distant from the town of Castries, above which latter frown the fortifications erected by the British at an expense of many mil- lions. Lying about midway between Martinique and Saint Vincent, it seems wonderful to the lay mind that Saint Lucia should thus far have escaped disaster. It is about one hundred miles as the crow flies, from Mont Pelee, at the north end of Martinique, to the Soufriere, at the north end of Saint Vincent, the erup- tion from which was almost synchronous with that from the former. There is no town nearer the volcano than a little set- tlement called Chateau Belaire, on the leeward coast, which lies about opposite the port of Georgetown at the windward — as the east coast is called. From one town to the other, all the way round the north end of the island, the plantations and provision grounds have been absolutely wiped out. Not many of the lives lost were those of white people in either island, the majority being colored.
Space remains only for a mere allusion to the southernmost island of the Caribbean chain, little Grenada, which, with a crater in its central hills, and its chief harbor in a crater, is in a good sit- uation for some interesting developments, if volcanic activity should in the future spread from the two islands midway the chain to its two extremes.
CHAPTER III.
The Island of Martinique and the City of St.
Pierre.
SAINT PIERRE is the principal city of the French island of Martinique, having a population of over 25,000, and is one of the most important cities in the Lesser Antilles. Situated on the west coast of the island of Martinique, the town faces an open roadstead sheltered by high mountains from the easterly trade winds, and affording anchorage for hundreds of vessels. The town proper is built on the slope of a high range of hills separated by a valley and a small stream, which have been made into a park, with stately avenues extending up the valley to the rear of the town, where it joins what is conceded to be the handsomest botani- cal garden in the West Indies.
Originally it was built entirely of stone. After several earth- quakes, which resulted in terrible loss of life, the inhabitants built their houses of wood. Then the town was fire swept and stone was again used as the general building material. After several earth- quakes wood once more was used, but the place was destroyed by fire again about eight years ago.
The streets of the town, while narrow, are paved, with broad gutters in the centre, down which flows a steady stream of water from springs in the hills, keeping the streets in a condition of nearly absolute cleanliness. Adjoining the city on the north are several large sugar factories, including the Guerin Works, one of
39
40 MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE
the largest in the West Indies. A tramway connects the southern portion of the city with the northern, a peculiar feature of the line being the women conductors. The motive power is mules. In addition to the many factories producing sugar, rum and Florida water, Saint Pierre is the distributing point of the French West Indies and for French Guiana. Two handsome cathedrals, the new and the old, several attractive public buildings, and a municipal opera house, which maintains a permanent opera com- pany, are among the noteworthy features of the city.
THE NATIVES OF MARTINIQUE
The natives are for the most part negroes. The other natives are of French extraction, and the language of the latter nation is universally spoken. The picturesque situation of the city, with the gay costumes of the natives, gives the place a decidedly operatic appearance. The climate is almost perfect.
The population of St. Pierre is like the people of the Arabian Nights. European, negro and Indian combined to make this strange race, but the Indian seemed to predominate. It is many colored, but the general, dominant tint is yellow, like that of the town of St. Pierre itself. It is a race of half-breeds, the finest mixed race in the West Indies. Lafcadio Hearn says of these people: " Straight as palms and supple and tall, these colored women and men impress one wonderfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of movement. They walk without swinging of the shoul- ders— the perfectly set torso seems to remain rigid ; yet the step is a long, full stride, and the whole weight is springingly poised on the very tip of the bare foot. All, or nearly all, are without shoes ; the treading of many feet over the heated pavement makes a con- tinuous, whispering sound.
MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE
41
" Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by the singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's costumes, especially their head-dress. It is merely an immense Madras hand- kerchief, which is folded about the head with admirable art, like a turban — one bright end pushed through at the top in front being left sticking up like a plume. Then this turban, always full of bright canary color, is fastened with golden brooches — -one in front and one
A BEAUTIFUL PARK IN ST. PIERRE
at either side. As for the remainder of the dress, it is simple enough ; an embroidered, lowcut chemise with sleeves ; a skirt or jupe, very long behind, but caught up and fastened in front below the breast so as to bring the hem everywhere to a level with the end of the long chemise, and finally a foulard or silken kerchief thrown over the shoulders. These jupes and foulards, however, are exquisite in
42 MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE
pattern and color ; bright crimson, bright yellow, bright blue, bright green — lilac, violet, rose — sometimes mingled in plaidings or check- erings or stripings, black with orange, sky-blue with purple.
" But few are thus attired. The greater number of the women carrying burdens on their heads— peddling vegetables, cakes, fruit, ready-cooked food from door to door — are very simply dressed in a single plain robe of vivid colors reaching from neck to feet, and made with a train, but generally girded well up so as to sit close to the figure and leave the lower limbs partly bare and perfectly free. These women can walk all day long up and down hill in the hot sun, without shoes, carrying loads of from one hundred to one hun- dred and fifty pounds on their heads, and if their little stock some- times fails to come up to the accustomed weight stones are added to make It heavy enough. And the Creole street cries, uttered in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and produce random harmonies very pleasing to hear."
The people of Martinique are very poor, although outwardly their houses and shops give an impression of wealth. The build- ings are very pretty, are in colors red, white and blue, and are kept up very well. Inside the shops the displays appear to be quite lav- ish, but there are few moneyed purchasers. The credit system pre- vails almost exclusively. The majority of the people — who are black, of course — live on next to nothing. Four pence (eight cents) a day is the usual wage for labor, and is about as much as the employers can afford to pay. The laborers work very hard for the small wage. As in most of the West Indian Islands, the women greatly outnum- ber the men, and do the brunt of the manual labor.
We have spoken, as the reader will perceive, in the present tense, as though St. Pierre were a thing of the present, and its in- habitants living and breathing men and women. But in truth these
MAP OF THE ISLAND OF MARTINIQUE, SHOWING ST. PIERRE. MT. PELEE, AND OTHER
POINTS OF INTEREST
43
44 MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE
people, with few exceptions, have ceased to live, and their former place of habitation is a city of the past, a Pompeii of the West Indies.
LIFE AND MANNERS IN ST. PIERRE.
Merchants and ship captains who know the Windward Islands cannot conceive of the gay little port of St. Pierre de Martinique being covered with ashes and lava. As do all the colonial capitals of the French, St. Pierre followed as closely as the steamers and mails would permit the customs and fashions of Paris. At the Hotel des Bains, at the "absinthe hour," one might always find a gather- ing of young men of the town, who sat sipping their liqueurs and chatting gaily.
The Rue de Victor Hugo was the principal thoroughfare. All of the best shops were located on it, and it served as a parade for the fashionables when they made their appearance in the cool of the evening, arrayed in their white ducks, Panama hats, and low-cut patent leather shoes, and the women either in the year-old fashions of Paris or in the striking, gaily colored native garb.
The Cathedral, the Opera House (where traveling companies played before enthusiastic audiences), the Hotel des Bains and the banks were probably the largest and best built buildings in the town. French was the common language, and nearly all of the white people were of French extraction. It was a lively little place, and its people had some of the light spirit and gaiety of their Gallic kinsmen. Always on coming into the harbor passengers noted the apparent freshness and cleanliness of the place. The white houses, with their green blinds and tiled or thatched roofs, the gay striped awnings and vivid green of the background, made a cool, pleasant picture. Ashore, the bright costumes of the native girls, the movement of thestreet life and the strangeness of the new scenes were a source of constant interest to tourists.
MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE 45
The upper or new town was the most attractive part of the place. The streets were broader and cleaner, and the buildings of a better quality. All of the streets were narrow, even the Rue de Victor Hugo being scarcely wide enough to permit two carriages to pass abreast.
Through every street, as above said, ran an open gutter of water, and early in the morning, just when the cool dawn wind was cominor down from the mountains, these gutters would be alive with people. The native women would bring out their tall earthen jars, called "Welsh hats" by the resident Englishmen, to be filled with the cool, flowing water. Babies were brought out and allowed to disport themselves, while their mothers cleansed the household utensils. The streams being fed from mountain lakes, cleanliness in dress and habitation was common, even among the lowest classes.
Back from St. Pierre about eight miles, on a winding mountain road, was the fashionable native resort, Morne Rouge. Here the rich residents had their country homes. In the season, which began about June i, there were usually 4,000 or 5,000 persons at Morne Rouge. Probably half that number had gone out this year to open their villas.
SITUATION OF THE CITY
There were no wharves or quays at St. Pierre, and really no harbor — simply an open roadstead with deep water inshore. The island rises sheerly from the sea, and there was no anchorage until the ships got within 300 feet of the buildings on shore. Skip- pers of sailing vessels would take their ships close in and anchor with bows pointed seaward and with a stern line out to steady the craft. They had to be alert during the rainy or stormy season, be- cause of their exposed condition, and be ready to slip anchors and run out to sea.
46 MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE
Where St. Pierre was, the coast line curves inland like a slightly- bent bow. Describing it, one of the shopkeepers on the Rue de Victor Hugo used to say that the town was situated on a bay shaped " like a dilemma, with a volcano on one horn and a tropical jungle on the other." He had got the phrase from an English corres- pondent, who had wondered what the inhabitants would do if such a calamity as the present one ever occurred. The Englishman had noted the lack of roads leading from the town and the futility of any hope of escape.
The town was built on the flat, narrow foreshore that lay be- tween the foot of the steep wooded mountains and the sea. The houses and shops were built down to the water's edge and clustered in irregular groups about the Cathedral, which was situated directly opposite where the ships lay in the roadstead, and was the promi- nent architectural feature of the town. It was built of a whitish stone, and with its two towers, in which bells were hung, was sharply accentuated against the green background of the moun tains. The water front of the town extended for nearly two miles along the gently curving coast. All the space back to the hills that shut in the town was filled with the low white houses of the people. Some twenty or twenty-five streets ran down from the hills to the water front. These were cut by irregular cross-streets.
There were a great many Americans in business in St. Pierre. The business of the island seemed to be about equally divided be- tween French and American merchants. There were very few Englishmen on the island. The whites were practically all Ameri- cans and French. During the Winter there have been thousands of American tourists on the island. It was a delightful place to spend a few weeks; the climate always was superb, and everything about the place was sure to charm the visitor.
MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE - 47
Martinique, the island of which St. Pierre was the commercial city, is the longest and most northerly of the Windward Islands, which form a portion of the chain of the Lesser Antilles. It is placed about the middle of the series which stretches in a curved line from Porto Rico almost to the coast of Venezuela. It is situ- ated almost midway between Dominica and St. Lucia, twenty miles north of the latter place, and is about forty-five miles long and from ten to fifteen miles wide. Extensive masses of volcanic rocks cover the interior of the island, in which there are six extinct volcanoes, in addition to the active Mont Pelee, which has just shown itself the reverse of extinct. Only about two-fifths of the island is under cultivation, but the land is of extraordinary fertility, producing great quantities of sugar, coffee and cocoa.
HISTORY OF THE ISLAND
The island, which was discovered by the Spaniards in 1493, was settled by the French in 1635, captured by the British in 1794 and again in 1809, but restored to France for the second time in 18 14. The population is 160,000, mostly colored.
Due in part to the bounty system of the French Government, Martinique and Guadeloupe are prosperous and contented, in strong contrast to the now poor and needy British islands adjoining. This condition is so apparent that even the casual visitor cannot fail to notice the difference. The native population is also more sprightly and more gaudily dressed than the negroes of the adjoining islands of St. Lucia, Dominica and particularly Antigua, yet the sugar trade, which is practically the only commercial industry of the Island of Martinique, has not been profitable of late years, and the future of both Martinique and Guadaloupe, even before the eruption of Mont Pelee, was very gloomy. The French Government, it is
48 MARTINIQUE AND ST. PIERRE
said, intends to remove the bounty from sugar, and without this bounty the industry cannot Hve, and without the industry the people of the island cannot very well subsist.
Martinique is probably best known as having been the birth- place of the unfortunate Empress Josephine, in whose honor a handsome statue has been erected at Fort de France, a seaport on the east coast, the centre of an important coal trade, numerous and regular shipments of coal being made from this port.
Fort de France was originally known as Port Royal, this being
changed on the advent of Republican rule. Two rivers border it,
while the hills recede farther from the shore than at St. Pierre.
Trees are scarce save in the park, where are long and thickly
planted rows of tamarinds and mangoes, a double line of them
enclosing a large open space, covered with luxuriant grass. In the
centre of this space stands the statue of which we have spoken, the
queenly Josephine, a figure of majestic poise and graceful outline,
its material the purest white marble. Surrounding it is a circle of
magnificent palms, whose glorious crowns rival that which adorns
the head of the Empress, whose left hand rests on a medallion of
Napoleon. On the pedestal a bas relief in bronze represents
Napoleon before Josephine and in the act of placing a crown
upon her head.
Near the southern end of Martinique the island is nearly
divided in two by a deep bay. On the northern side of this stands Fort de France, and directly south of it lies the little town of Trois-Ilets, hidden from view by a deep cape. In the vicinity of this small place is the plantation of La Pagerie, the birthplace of the child who was to become the Empress of France. It is a place which all tourists to the island visit. In its present state the dwell- ing is not of attractive aspect, it being a low wooden-house, with
Martinique and st. Pierre 49
a roof of tiles, the whole old and dilapidated, while over the door is the common shop sign Debit de la Ferine, showing that rum and salt-fish are here on sale. This, however, the visitor soon learns, is not the house in which was born the future Empress, but its suc- cessor, the original house having been destroyed by a hurricane shortly after her birth. But the materials of which it is constructed came from the birth-place of Josephine. Of the buildings of her period there remain only the old kitchen and the sugar house of the estate.
Another native of Martinique to whom some degree of nota- bility attaches, was Alexandre de Beauharnais, the first husband of the future bride of Napoleon and Empress of France. He was one of the victims of the Revolution, but his son, Eugene de Beau- harnais, rose high in the favor of Napoleon, was made a prince and viceroy of Italy, and in 1812 commanded a corps of the grand army.
CHAPTER IV.
Mont Pelee and its Harvest of Death.
THE city of St. Pierre, Martinique, lies along the coast of its bay, for a length of about a mile, with high cliffs hemming it in, the houses of stone and brick, covered with brown earthen tiles, climb up to the hills, tier upon tier. At one place, where a river breaks through the cliffs, the city creeps further up towards the mountains. As seen from the bay, its appearance is picturesque and charming, with the soft tints of its tiles, the grey of its walls, the clumps of verdure in its midst, and the wall of green in the rear. Seen from its streets this beauty disappears, and the chief attraction of the town is gone.
Back from the three miles of hills which sweep in an arc round the town, is ^he noble Montague 1 elee lying several miles to the north of the city, a mass of dark rock some four thousand feet high, with jagged outline, and cleft with gorges and ravines, down which flow numerous streams, gushing from the crater lake of the great volcano.
Though known to be a volcano, it was looked upon as practi- cally extinct, though as late as August, 1856, it had been in eruption. No lava at that time came from its crater, but it hurled out great quantities of ashes and mud, with strong sulphurous odor. Then it went to rest again, and slept till 1902.
The people had long ceased to fear it. No one expected that grand old Mont Pelee, the slumbering (so it was thought), 50
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 51
tranquil old hill, would ever spurt forth fire and death. This was entirely unlocked for. Mont Pelee was regarded by the natives as a sort of protector ; they had an almost superstitious affection for it. From the outskirts of the city it rose gradually, its sides grown thick with rich grass, and dotted here and there with spreading shrubbery and drooping trees. There was no pleasanter outing for an afternoon than a journey up the green, velvet-like sides of the towering mountain and a view of the quaint, picturesque city slum- bering at its base.
A PEACEFUL SCENE
There were no rocky cliffs, no crags, no protruding boulders. The mountain was peace itself, It seemed to promise perpetual protection. The poetic natives relied upon it to keep back storms from the land and frighten, with its stern brow, the tempests from the sea. They pointed to it with profoundest pride as one of the most beautiful mountains in the world.
Children played in its bowers and arbors ; families picnicked there day after day during the balmy weather ; hundreds of tour- ists ascended to the summit and looked with pleasure at the beauti- ful crystal lake which sparkled and glinted in the sunshine. Mont Pelee was the place of enjoyment of the people of St. Pierre. I can hear the placid natives say : '* Old Father Pelee is our protec- tor— not our destroyer."
Not until two weeks before the eruption ; did the slumbering mountain show signs of waking to death and disaster. On the 23d of April it first displayed symptoms of internal disquiet, A great column of smoke began to rise from it, and was accompanied from time to time by showers of ashes and cinders.
Despite these signals, there was nothing until Monday, May 5th, to indicate actual danger. On that day a stream of smoking
52 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
mud and lava burst through the top of the crater and plunged into the valley of the River Blanche, overwhelming the Guerin sugar works and killing twenty-three workmen and the son of the proprie- tor. Mr. Guerin's was one of the largest sugar works on the island ; its destruction entailed a heavy loss. The mud which overwhelmed it follov/ed the beds of streams towards the north of the island.
The alarm in the city was great, but it was somewhat allayed by the report of an expert commission appointed by the Governor, which decided that the eruption was normal and that the city was in no peril. To further allay the excitement, the Governor, with, several scientists, took up his residence in St. Pierre. He could not restrain the people by force, but the moral effect of his pre- sence and the decision of the scientists had a similar disastrous result.
A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION BY A SUFFERER.
The existing state of affairs during these few waiting days is so graphically given in a letter from Mrs. Thomas T. Prentis, wife of the United States Consul at St. Pierre, to her sister in Melrose, a suburban city of Boston, that we quote it here :
''My Dear Sister : This morning the whole population of the city is on the alert and every eye is directed toward Mont Pelee, an extinct volcano. Everybody is afraid that the volcano has taken into its heart to burst forth and destroy the whole island.
" Fifty years ago Mont Pelee burst forth with terrific force and destroyed everything within a radius of several miles. For several days the mountain has been bursting forth in flame and immense quantities of lava are flowing down its sides.
"All the inhabitants are going up to see it. There is not a horse to be had on the island, those belonging to the natives being kept in readiness to leave at a moment's notice.
MONl PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
53
" Last Wednesday, which was April 23rd, I was in my room with Httle Christine, and we heard three distinct shocks. They were so great that we supposed at first that there was some one at the door, and Christine went and found no one there. The first report was very loud, and the second and third were so great that dishes were thrown from the shelves and the house was rocked.
INTERIOR OF A HOME IN ST. PIERRE
"We can see Mont Pelee from the rear windows of our house, and although it is fully four miles away, we can hear the roar of the fire and lava issuing from it.
" The city is covered with ashes and clouds of smoke have been over our heads for the last five days. The smell of sulphur is so strong that horses on the streets stop and snort, and some of them are obliged to give up, drop in their harness and die from suffocation. Many of the people are obliged to wear wet handker- chiefs over their faces to protect them from the fumes of sulphur.
54 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
" My husband assures me that there is no immediate danger, and when there is the least particle of danger we will leave the place. There is an American schooner, the R. J. Mo7^se, in the harbor, and she will remain here for at least two weeks. If the volcano becomes very bad we shall embark at once and go out to sea. The papers in this city are asking if we are going to experi- ence another earthquake similar to that which struck here some fifty years ago."
THE FATEFUL EIGHTH OF MAY
The writer of this letter and her husband, Consul Prentis, trusted Mont Pelee too long. They perished, with all the inhabi- tants of the city, in a deadly flood of fire and ashes that descended on the devoted place on the fateful morning of Thursday, May 8th. Only for the few who were rescued from the ships in the harbor there would be scarcely a living soul to tell that dread story of ruin and death. The most graphic accounts are those given by rescued officers of the Roraima, one of the fleet of the Quebec Steamship Co., trading with the West Indies. This vessel had left the Island of Dominica for Martinique at midnight of Wednesday, and reached St. Pierre about 7 o'clock Thursday morning. The greatest difficulty was experienced in getting into port, the air being thick with falling ashes and the darkness intense. The ship had to grope its way to the anchorage. Appalling sounds were issuing from the mountain behind the town, which was shrouded in darkness. The ashes were falling thickly on the steamer's deck, where the passengers and others were gazing at the town, some being engaged in photographing the scene.
The best way in which we can describe a scene of which few lived to tell the story, is to give the narratives of a number of the gurvivors. From their several stories a coherent idea of the terrible
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 55
scene can be formed. From the various accounts oiven of the ter- rible explosion by officers of the Roraima, \vc select as a first example the following description by Assistant Purser Thompson :
A TALE OF SUDDEN RUIN
" I saw St. Pierre destroyed. It was blotted out by one great flash of fire. Nearly 40,000 persons were all killed at once. Out of eighteen vessels lying in the roads only one, the British steam- ship Roddam, escaped, and she, I hear, lost more than half on board. It was a dying crew that took her out.
" Our boat, the Roraima, of the Quebec Line, arrived at St. Pierre early Thursday morning. For hours before we entered the roadstead we could see flames and smoke rising from Mont Pelee. No one on board had any idea of danger. Captain G. T. Muggah was on the brido^e, and all hands gfot on deck to see the show.
"The spectacle was magnificent. /\s we approached vSt. Pierre we could distinguish the rolling and leaping of the red flames that belched from the mountain in huge volumes and gushed high into the sky. Enormous clouds of black smoke hung over the volcano.
** When we anchored at St. Pierre I noticed the cable steam- ship Grappler, the Roddam, three or four American schooners and a number of Italian and Norwegian barks. The flames were then spurting straight up in the air, now and then waving to one side or the other for a moment and again leaping suddenly higher up.
"There was a constant muffled roar. It was like the biggest oil refinery in the world burning up on the mountain top. There was a tremendous explosion about 7.45 o'clock, soon after we got in. The mountain was blown to pieces. There was no warn- ing. The side of the volcano was ripped out, and there was hurled
56 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
straight toward us a solid wall of flame. It sounded like thousands of cannon.
" The wave of fire was on us and over us like a lightning flash. It was like a hurricane of fire. I saw it strike the cable steamship Grappler broadside on and capsize her. From end to end she burst into flames and then sank. The fire rolled in mass straight down upon St. Pierre and the shipping. The town van- ished before our eyes and the air grew stifling hot, and we were in the thick of it.
" Wherever the mass of fire struck the sea the water boiled and sent up vast clouds of steam. The sea was torn into huge whirlpools that careened toward the open sea.
" One of these horrible hot whirlpools swung under the Ror- auna and pulled her down on her beam ends with the suction. She careened way over to port, and then the fire hurricane from the volcano smashed her, and over she went on the opposite side. The fire wave swept off the masts and smokestack as if they were cut with a knife.
HEAT CAUSED EXPLOSIONS
" Captain Muggah was the only one on deck not killed out- right. He was caught by the fire wave and terribly burned. He yelled to get up the anchor, but, before two fathoms were heaved in the Roraima was almost upset by the boiling whirlpool, and the fire wave had thrown her down on her beam ends to starboard. Cap- tain Muggah was overcome by the flames. He fell unconscious from the bridge and toppled overboard.
" The blast of fire from the volcano lasted only a few minutes. It shriveled and set fire to everything it touched. Thousands of casks of rum were stored in St. Pierre, and these were exploded by the terrific heat. The burning rum ran in streams down every street
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 57
and out to the sea. This blazing rum set fire to the Roraima several times. Before the volcano burst the landings of St. Pierre were crowded with people. After the explosion not one living being was seen on land. Only twenty-five of those on the Roraima out of sixty-eight were left after the first flash.
"The French cruiser Suchet came in and took us off at 2 p. M. She remained nearby, helping all she could, until 5 o'clock, then went to Fort de France with all the people she had rescued. At that time it looked as if the entire north end of the island was on fire."
C. C. Evans, of Montreal, and John G. Morris, of New York, who were among those rescued, say the vessel arrived at 6 o'clock. As eight bells were struck a frightful explosion was heard up the mountain. A cloud of fire, toppling and roaring, swept with light- ning speed down the mountain side and over the town and bay. The Roraima was nearly sunk, and caught fire at once.
" I can never forget the horrid, fiery, choking whirlwind which enveloped me," said Mr. Evans. " Mr. Morris and I rushed below. We are not very badly burned, not so bad as most of them. When the fire came we were going to our posts (we are engmeers) to weigh anchor and get out. When we came up we found the ship afire aft, and fought it forward until 3 o'clock, when the Suchet came to our rescue. We were then building a raft."
" Ben " Benson, the carpenter of the Roraima, said : " I was on deck, amidships, when I heard an explosion. The captain or- dered me to up anchor. I got to the windlass, but when the fire came I went into the forecastle and got my 'duds.' When I came out I talked with Captain Muggah, Mr. Scott, the first ofificer and others. They had been on the bridge. The captain was horribly burned. He had inhaled flames and wanted to jump into the sea.
58 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
I tried to make him take a life-preserver. The captain, who was undressed, jumped overboard and hung on to a Hne for a while. Then he disappeared."
THE cooper's story.
James Taylor, a cooper employed on the Roraima, gives the following account of his experience of the disaster :
"Hearing a tremendous report and seeing the ashes falling thicker, I dived into- a room, dragging with me Samuel Thomas, a gangway man and fellow countryman, shutting the door tightly. Shortly after I heard a voice, which I recognized as that of the chief mate, Mr. Scott. Opening the door with great caution, I drew him in. The nose of Thomas was burned by the intense heat.
" We three and Thompson, the assistant purser, out of sixty- eight souls on board, were the only persons who escaped practically uninjured. The heat being unbearable, I emerged in a few moments, and the scene that presented itself to my eyes baffles de- scription. All around on the deck were the dead and dying cov- ered with boiling mud. There they lay, men, women and little children, and the appeals of the latter for water were heart-rending. When water was given them they could not swallow it, owing to their throats beine filled with ashes or burnt with the heated air.
" The ship was burning aft, and I jumped overboard, the sea being intensely hot, I was at once swept seaward by a tidal wave, but, the sea receding a considerable distance, the return wave washed me against an upturned sloop to which I clung. I was joined by a man so dreadfully burned and disfigured as to be unrecognizable. Afterwards I found he was the captain of the Roraima, Captain Muggah. He was in dreadful agony, begging piteously to be put on board his ship.
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 59
" Picking up some wreckage which contained bedding and a tool chest, I, with the help of five others who had joined me on the wreck, constructed a rude raft, on which we placed the cap- tain. Then, seeing an upturned boat, I asked one of the five, a native of Martinique, to swim and fetch it. Instead of returning to us, he picked up two of his countrymen and went away in the di- rection of Fort de France. Seeing the Roddam, which arrived in port shortly after we anchored, making for the Roraima, I said good-bye to the captain and swam back to the Roraima.
"The Roddam, however, burst into flames and put to sea. I reached the Roramia at about half-past 2, and was afterwards taken off by a boat from the French warship Suchet. Twenty-four others with myself were taken on to Fort de France. Three of these died before reaching port. A number of others have since died."
Samuel Thomas, the gangway man, whose life was saved by the forethought of Taylor, says that the scene on the burning ship was awful. The groans and cries of the dying, for whom nothing could be done, were horrible. He describes a woman as being burned to death with a living babe in her arms. He says that it seemed as if the whole world was afire.
CONSUL AYMe's statement
The inflammable material in the forepart of the ship that would have ignited that part of the vessel was thrown overboard by him and the other two uninjured men. The Grappler, the telegraph company's ship, was seen opposite the Usine Guerin, and disappeared as if blown up by a submarine explosion. The captain's body was subsequently found by a boat from the Suchet.
Consul Ayme, of Guadeloupe, who, as already stated, had hastened to Fort de France on hearing of the terrible event, tells the story of the disaster in the following words :
6o MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
" Thursday morning the inhabitants of the city awoke to find heavy clouds shrouding Mont Pelee crater. All day Wednesday horrid detonations had been heard. These were echoed from St. Thomas on the north to Barbados on the south. The cannonad- ing ceased on Wednesday night, and fine ashes fell like rain on St. Pierre. The inhabitants were alarmed, but Governor Mouttet, who had arrived at St. Pierre the evening before, did everything possible to allay the panic.
" The British steamer Rorainia reached St. Pierre on Thursday with ten passengers, among whom were Mrs. Stokes and her three children, and Mrs. H. J. I nee. They were watching the rain of ashes, when, with a frightful roar and terrific electric discharges, a cyclone of fire, mud and steam swept down from the crater over the town and bay, sweeping all before it and destroying the fleet of vessels at anchor off the shore. There the accounts of the catastrophe so far obtainable cease. Thirty thousand corpses are strewn about, buried in the ruins of St. Pierre, or else floating, gnawed by sharks, in the surrounding seas. Twenty-eight charred, half-dead human beings were brought here. Sixteen of them are already dead, and only four of the whole number are expected to
recover."
A WOMAN S EXPERIENCE ON THE "RORAIMA
Margaret Stokes, the 9 year old daughter of the late Clement Stokes, of New York, who, with her mother, a brother aged 4 and a sister aged 3 years, was on the ill-fated steamer Royaima, was saved from that vessel, but is not expected to live. Her nurse, Clara King, tells the following story of her experience :
She says she was in her stateroom, when the steward of the Roraima called out to her :
" Look at Mont Pelee."
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 6i
She went on deck and saw a vast mass of black cloud coming down from the volcano. The steward ordered her to return to the saloon, saying, " It is coming."
Miss King then rushed to the saloon. She says she experi- enced a feeling of suffocation, which was followed by intense heat. The afterpart of the Roraima broke out in flames. Ben Benson, the carpenter of the Roraima, severely burned, assisted Miss King and Margaret Stokes to escape. With the help of Mr. Scott, the first mate of the Roraima, he constructed a raft, with life preservers. Upon this Miss King and Margaret were placed.
While this was being done Margaret's little brother died. Mate Scott brought the child water at great personal danger, but it was unavailing. Shortly after the death of the little boy Mrs. Stokes succumbed. Margaret and Miss King eventually got away on the raft, and were picked up by the steamer Korona. Mate Scott also escaped. Miss King did not sustain serious injuries. She covered the face of Margaret with her dress, but still the child was probably fatally burned.
The only woman known at that time to have survived the dis- aster at St. Pierre was a negress named Fillotte. She was found in a cellar Saturday afternoon, where she had been for three days. She was still alive, but fearfully burned from head to toes. She died afterward in the hospital.
CAPTAIN freeman's THRILLING ACCOUNT
Of the vessels in the harbor of St. Pierre on the fateful morn- ing, only one, the British steamer Roddam, escaped, and that v/ith a crew of whom few reached the open sea alive. Those who did escape were terribly injured. Captain Freeman, of this vessel, tells what he experienced in the following thrilling language :
62 MOUNT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
"St. Lucia, British West Indies, May 1 1. — The st&-3im&v Roddam, of which I am captain, left St, Lucia at midnight of May 7, and was off St. Pierre, Martinique, at 6 o'clock on the morning of the 8th. I noticed that the volcano, Mont Pelee, was smoking, and crept slowly in toward the bay, finding there among others the steamer Roraima, the telegraph repairing steamer Grappler and four sailing vessels. I went to anchorage between 7 and 8 and had hardly moored when the side of the volcano opened out with a terrible explosion. A wall of fire swept over the town and the bay. The Roddam was struck broadside by the burning mass. The shock to the ship was terrible, nearly capsizing her.
AWFUL RESULTS
' Hearing the awful report of the explosion and seeing the great wall of flames approaching the steamer, those on deck sought shelter wherever it was possible, jumping into the cabin, the fore- castle and even into the hold. I was in the chart room, but the burning embers were borne by so swift a movement of the air that they were swept in through the door and port holes, suffocating and scorching me badly. I was terribly burned by these embers about the face and hands, but managed to reach the deck. Then, as soon as it was possible, I mustered the few survivors who seemed able to move, ordered them to slip the anchor, leaped for the bridge and ran the engine for full speed astern. The second and the third engineer and a fireman were on watch below and so escaped injury. They did their part in the attempt to escape, but the men on deck could not work the steering gear because it was jammed by the debris from the volcano. We accordingly went ahead and astern until the gear was free, but in this running backward and forward it was two hours after the first shock before we were clear of the bay.
64 MOUNT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
"One of the most terrifying conditions was that, the atmosphere being charged with ashes, it was totally dark. The sun was com- pletely obscured, and the air was only illuminated by the flames from the volcano and those of the burning town and shipping. It seems small to say that the scene was terrifying in the extreme. As we backed out we passed close to the Roi^aima, which was one mass of blaze. The steam was rushino^ from the enorine room, and the screams of those on board were terrible to hear. The cries for help were all in vain, for I could do nothing but save my own ship. When I last saw the Rorauna she was settling down by the stern. That was about to o'clock in the morning.
"When the Roddam was safely out of the harbor of St. Pierre, with its desolations and horrors, I made for St. Lucia. Arriving there, and when the ship was safe, I mustered the survivors as well as I was able and searched for the dead and injured. Some I found in the saloon where they had vainly sought for safety, but the cabins were full of burning embers that had blown in through the port holes. Through these the fire swept as through funnels and burned the victims where they lay or stood, leaving a circular imprint of scorched and burned flesh. I brought ten on deck who were thus burned; two of them were dead, the others survived, although in a dreadful state of torture from their burns. Their screams of agony were heartrending. Out of a total of twenty-three on board the Roddam, which includes the captain and the crew, ten are dead and several are in the hospital. My first and second mates, my chief engineer and my supercargo, Campbell by name, were killed. The ship was covered from stem to stern with tons of powdered lava, which retained its heat for hours after it had fallen. In many cases it was practically incandescent, and to move about the deck in this burning mass was not only difficult but absolutely perilous. I am
A TYPICAL STREET SCENE IN ST.
Copyrigbt.J. Murray Jordan.
PIERRE, MARTINIQUE
GROUP OF CHARACTERISTIC PICTURES I. An Interior View of a Modern House. 2. A Farmer's Plantation. 3. The Home of a Go
4. A Beautiful Garden Vista.
Government Ofticial
FOUR TYPICAL LADIES OF THE WINDWARD ISLANDS
> ■■' -y^-'-
A GROUP OF CHARACTERISTIC PICTURES
(1.) An Ancient Volcanic Peak. (2) A Street Corner in Trinidad. (3) A View of Hamilton, Bermuda, where Ashes Fell. (4) Landing of Relief Ship.
JAPANESE REGIONS DEVASTATED BY A GREAT EARTHQUAKE
A ROUGH MOUNTAIN STREAM IN MARTINIQUE
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 65
only now able to begin thoroughly to clear and search the ship for any damage done by this volcanic rain, and to see if there are any corpses in out-of-the-way places. For instance, this morning, I found one body in the peak of the forecastle. The body was horribly burned and the sailor had evidently crept in there in his agony to die.
" On the arrival of the Roddam at St. Lucia the ship presented an appalling appearance. Dead and calcined bodies lay about the deck, which was also crowded with injured, helpless and suffering people. Prompt assistance was rendered to the injured by the authorities here and my poor, tortured men were taken to the hos- pital. The dead were buried. I have omitted to mention that out of twenty-one black laborers that I brought from Grenada to help in stevedoring, only six survived. Most of the others threw themselves overboard to escape a dreadful fate, but they met a worse one, for it is an actual fact that the water around the ship was literally at a boiling heat. The escape of my vessel was miracu- lous. The woodwork of the cabins and bridge and everything in- flammable on deck were constantly igniting, and it was with great difficulty that we few survivors managed to keep the flames down. My ropes, awnings, tarpaulins were completely burned up.
" I witnessed the entire destruction of St. Pierre. The flames enveloped the town in every quarter with such rapidity that it was impossible that any person could be saved. As I have said, the day was suddenly turned to night, but I could distinguish by the light of the burning town people distractedly running about on the beach. The burning buildings stood out from the surrounding darkness like black shadows. All this time the mountain was roar- ing and shaking, and in the intervals between these terrifying sounds I could hear the cries of despair and agony from the thousands who were perishing. These cries added to the terror of the scene, but 5
66 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
it is impossible to describe its horror or the dreadful sensations it produced. It was like witnessing the end of the world.
" Let me add that, after the first shock was over, the survivors of the crew rendered willing help to navigate the ship to this port. Mr. Plissoneau, our agent in Martinique, happening to be on board, was saved, and I really believe that he is the only survivor of St. Pierre. As it is, he is seriously burned on the hands and face.
"FREEMAN, " Master British Steamship Roddam^
THE " ETONA " PASSES ST. PIERRE
The British steamer Etona, of the Norton Line, stopped at St. Lucia to coal on May loth. Captain Cantell there visited the Roddain diud. had an interview with Captain Freeman. On the nth the Etona put to sea again, passing St. Pierre in the afternoon. We subjoin her captain's story :
" The weather was clear and we had a fine view, but the old outlines of St. Pierre were not recognizable. Everything was a mass of blue lava, and the formation of the land itself seemed to have changed. When we were about eight miles off the northern end of the island Mount Pelee began to belch a second time. Clouds of smoke and lava shot into the air and spread over all the sea, darkening the sun. Our decks in a few minutes were covered with a substance that looked like sand dyed a bluish tint, and which smelled like phosphorus. For all that the day was clear, there was little to be seen satisfactorily. Over the island there hung a blue haze. It seemed to me that the formation, the topography, of the island was altered.
" Everything seemed to be covered with a blue dust, such as had fallen aboard us every day since we had been within the affected
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 67
region. It was blue lava dust. For more than an hour we scanned the coast with our glasses, now and then discovering something that looked like a ruined hamlet or collection of buildings. There was no life visible. Suddenly we realized that we might have to fight for our lives as the Roddmns people had done.
" We were about four miles off the northern end of the island when suddenly there shot up in the air to a tremendous height a column of smoke. The sky darkened and the smoke seemed to swirl down upon us. In fact, it spread all around, darkening the atmosphere as far as we could see. I called Chief Engineer Far- rish to the deck.
" ' Do you see that over there ?' I asked, pointing to the eruption, for it was the second eruption of Mont Pelee. He saw it all right. Captain Freeman's story was fresh in my mind.
" ' Well, Farrish, rush your engines as they have never been rushed before,' I said to him. He went below, and soon we began to burn coal and pile up the feathers in our forefoot.
" I was on watch with Second Officer Gibbs. At once we began to furl awnings and make secure against fire. The crew were all showing an anxious spirit, and everybody on board, includ- ing the four passengers, were serious and apprehensive.
" We began to cut through the water at almost twelve knots. Ordinarily we make ten knots. We could see no more of the land contour, but everything seemed to be enveloped in a great cloud. There was no fire visible, but the lava dust rained down upon us steadily. In less than an hour there were two inches of it upon our deck.
" The air smelled like phosphorous. No one dared to look up to try to locate the sun, because one's eyes would fill with lava dust. Some of the blue lava dust is sticking to our mast yet,
68 MONT PRLRE AND ITS HARVEST OR DRATH
although we have swabbed 'decks and rigging again and again to be clear of it.
" After a little more than an hour's fast running we saw day- ligrht ahead and begran to breathe easier. If I had not talked with Captain Freeman and heard from him just how the black swirl of wind and fire rolled down upon him, I would not have been so apprehensive, but would have thought that the darkness and cloud that came down upon us meant just an unusually heavy squall.'
CHIEF ENGINEER FARRISH's STORV
" The Etonas run from Montevideo was a fast one — I think a record breaker. We were 22 days and 2 1 hours from port to port. Off Martinique I stared at the coast for about an hour, and then went below. The blue lava that covered everything faded into the haze that hung over the island so that nothing was dis- tinctly visible. Through my glass I discovered a stream of lava, thoueh. It stretched down the mountain side, and seemed to be flowing into the sea. It was not clearly and distinctly visible, however.
" About 3 o'clock I went below to take forty winks. I had been in my berth only a few minutes when the steward told me the captain wanted me on the bridge.
' ' Do you see that, Farrish ?' he asked, pointing at the land. An outburst of smoke seemed to be sweeping down upon us. It made me think of the Roddam s experience. Smoke and dust closed in about us, shutting out the sunlight, and precipitating a fall of lava on our decks.
" 'Go below and drive her,' said the captain, and I didn't lose any time, I can tell you. We burned coal as though it didn't cost
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 69
a cent. The safety valve was jumping every second, even though we were making twelve knots an hour. For two hours we kept up the pace, and then, running into clear daylight, let the engines slow down and we all cheered up a bit."
CAPTAIN CANTELL VISITS THE " RODDAM "
Captain Cantell went on board the Roddam, whose frightful condition he thus describes :
"At St. Lucia, on May iith, I went on board the British steamship Roddam, which had escaped from the terrible volcanic eruption at Martinique two days before. The state of the ship was enough to show that those on board must have undergone an awful experience.
"The Roddam was covered with a mass of fine bluish gray dust or ashes of cement-like appearance. In some parts it lay two feet deep on the decks. This matter had fallen in a red-hot state all over the steamer, setting fire to everything it struck that was burnable, and, when it fell on the men on board, burning off limbs and large pieces of flesh. This was shown by finding portions of human flesh when the decks were cleared of the debris. The rig- ging, ropes, tarpaulins, sails, awnings, etc., were charred or burned, and most of the upper stanchions and spars were swept over- board or destroyed by fire. Skylights were smashed and cabins were filled with volcanic dust. The scene of ruin was deplorable.
"The captain, though suffering the greatest agony, succeeded in navigating his vessel safely to the port of Castries, St. Lucia, with eighteen dead bodies on the deck and human limbs scattered about. A sailor stood by constantly wiping the captain's injured eyes.
" I think the performance of the Roddam' s captain was most wonderful, and the more so when I saw his pitiful condition. I do
70 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
not understand how he kept up, yet when the steamer arrived at St. Lucia and medical assistance was procured, this brave man asked the doctors to attend to the others first and refused to be treated until this was done.
" My interview with the captain brought out this account. I left him in good spirits and receiving every comfort. The sight of his face would frighten anyone not prepared to see it."
THE VIVID ACCOUNT OF M. ALBERT
To the accounts given by the survivors of the Roraima and the officers of the Etona, it will be well to add the following graphic story told by M. Albert, a planter of the island, the owner of an estate situated only a mile to the northeast of the burning crater of Mont Pelee. His escape from death had in it something of the marvellous. He says :
" Mont Pelee had given warning of the destruction that was to come, but we, who had looked upon the volcano as harmless, did not believe that it would do more than spout fire and steam, as it had done on other occasions. It was a little before eight o'clock on the morning of May 8 that the end came. I was in one of the fields of my estate when the ground trembled under my feet, not as it does when the earth quakes, but as though a terrible struggle was going on within the mountain. A terror came upon me, but I could not explain my fear.
" As I stood still Mont Pelee seemed to shudder, and a moaning sound issued from its crater. It was quite dark, the sun being ob- scured by ashes and fine volcanic dust. The air was dead about me, so dead that the floating dust seemingly was not disturbed. Then there was a rending, crashing, grinding noise, which I can only describe as sounding as though every bit of machinery m the
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 71
world had suddenly broken down. It was deafening, and the flash of light that accompanied it was blinding, more so than any light- ning I have ever seen.
" It was like a terrible hurricane, and where a fraction of a second before there had been a perfect calm, I felt myself drawn into a vortex and I had to brace myself firmly. It was like a great express train rushing by, and I was drawn by its force. The mys- terious force levelled a row of strong trees, tearing them up by the roots and leaving bare a space of ground fifteen yards wide and more than one hundred yards long. Transfixed I stood, not know- ing in what direction to flee. I looked toward Mont Pelee, and above its apex there appeared a great black cloud which reached high in the air. U literally fell upon the city of St. Pierre. It moved with a rapidity that made it impossible for anything to escape it. From the cloud came explosions that sounded as though all of the navies of the world were in titanic combat. Lightning played in and out in broad forks, the result being that intense darkness was followed by light that seemed to be of magnifying power.
" That St. Pierre was doomed I knew, but I was prevented from seeing the destruction by a spur of the hill that shut off the view of the city. It is impossible for me to tell how long I stood there inert. Probably it was only a few seconds, but so vivid were my impressions that it now seems as though I stood as a spectator for many minutes. When I recovered possession of my senses I ran to my house and collected the members of the family, all of whom were panic stricken. I hurried them to the seashore, where we boarded a small steamship, in which we made the trip in safety to Fort de France.
" I know that there was no flame in the first wave that was sent down upon St. Pierre. It was a heavy gas, like firedamp, and
72 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
it must have asphyxiated the inhabitants before they were touched by the fire, which quickly followed. As we drew out to sea in the small steamship, Mont Pelee was in the throes of a terrible convul- sion. New craters seemed to be opening all about the summit and lava was flowing in broad streams in every direction. My estate was ruined while we were still in sight of it. Many women who lived in St. Pierre escaped only to know that they were left widowed and childless. This is because many of the wealthier men sent their wives away, while they remained in St. Pierre to attend to their business affairs."
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE " HORACE "
The British steamer Horace experienced the effect of the explo- sion when farther from land. After touching at Barbados, she reached the vicinity of Martinique on May 9th, her decks being covered with several inches of dust when she was a hundred and twenty-five miles distant. We quote engineer Anderson's story :
" On the afternoon of May 8 (Thursday) we noticed a peculiar haze in the direction of Martinique. The air seemed heavy and oppressive. The weather conditions were not at all unlike those which precede the great West Indian hurricanes, but, knowing it was not the season of the year for them, we all remarked in the engine room that there must be a heavy storm approaching.
"Several of the sailors, experienced deep water seamen, laughed at our prognostications, and informed us there would be no storm within the next sixty hours, and insisted that, according to all fo'cas'le indications, a dead calm was in sight.
" So unusually peculiar were the weather conditions that we talked of nothing else during the evening. That night, in the direc- tion of Martinique, there was a very black sky, an unusual thing at
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 73
this season of the year, and a storm was apparently brewing in a direction from which storms do not come at this season.
GREAT FLASHES OF LIGHT
" As the night wore on those on watch noticed what appeared to be great flashes of lightning in the direction of Martinique. It seemed as though the ordinary conditions were reversed, and even the fo'cas'le prophets were unable to offer explanations.
" Occasionally, over the pounding of the engines and the rush of water, we thought we could hear long, deep roars, not unlike the ending of a deep peal of thunder. Several times we heard the rumble or roar, but at the time we were not certain as to exactly what it was, or even whether we really heard it.
" There would suddenly come great flashes of light from the dark bank toward Martinique. Some of them seemed to spread over a great area, while others appeared to spout skyward, funnel shaped. All night this continued, and it was not imtil day came that the flashes disappeared. The dark bank that covered the hori- zon toward Martinique, however, did not fade away with the break- ing of day, and at eight in the morning of the 9th (Friday) the whole section of the sky in that direction seemed dark and troubled.
" About nine o'clock Friday morning I was sitting on one of the hatches aft with some of the other engineers and officers of the ship, discussing the peculiar weather phenomena. I noticed a sort of grit that got into my mouth from the end of the cigar I was smoking.
" I attributed it to some rather bad coal which we had shipped aboard, and, turning to Chief Engineer Evans, I remarked that ' that coal was mighty dirty,' and he said that it was covering the ship with a sort of grit Then I noticed that grit was getting on
74 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
my clothes, and finally some one suggested that we go forward of the funnels, so we would not get dirt on us. As we went forward we met one or two of the sailors from the forecastle, who wanted to know about the dust that was falling on the ship. Then we found that the grayish-looking ash was sifting all over the ship, both for- ward and aft.
ASHES RAINED ON THE SHIP
" Every moment the ashes rained down all over the ship, and at the same time grew thicker. A few moments later, the lookout called down that we were running into a fog-bank dead ahead. Fog banks in that section are unheard of at nine o'clock in the morning at this season, and we were more than a hundred miles from land, and what could fog and sand be doing there.
" Before we knew it, we went into the fog, which proved to be a big dense bank of this same sand, and it rained down on us from every side. Ventilators were quickly brought to their places, and later even the hatches were battened down. The dust became suffo- cating, and the men at times had all they could do to keep from choking. What the stuff was we could not at first conjecture, or rather, we didn't have much time to speculate on it, for we had to get our ship in shape to withstand we hardly knew what.
" At first we thought that the sand must have been blown from shore. Then we decided that if the Captain's figures were right we wouldn't be near enough to shore to have sand blow on us, and as we had just cleared Barbados, we knew that the Captain's figures had to be right.
"Just as the storm of sand was at its height. Fourth Engineer Wild was nearly suffocated by it, but was easily revived. About this time it became so dark that we found it necessary to start up the electric lights, and it was not until after we got clear from the
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 75
fog that we turned the current off. In the meantime they had burned from nine o'clock in the morning until after two in the after- iioon.
THE ENGINE BECAME CHOKED
"Then there was another anxious moment shortly after nine o'clock. Third Engineer Rennie had been running the donkey engine, when suddenly it choked, and when he finally got it clear from the sand or ashes, he found the valves were all cut out, and then it was we discovered that it was not sand, but some sort of a composition that seemed to cut steel like emery. Then came the danger that it would get into the valves of the engine and cut them out, and for several moments all hands scurried about and helped make the engine room tight, and even then the ash drifted in and kept all the engine room force wiping the engines clear of it.
" Toward three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday we were practically clear of the sand, but at eleven o'clock that night we ran into a second bank of it, though not as bad as the first. We made some experiments, and found the stuff was superior to emery dust. It cut deeper and quicker, and only about half as much was required to do the work. We made up our minds we would keep what came on board, as it was better than the emery dust and much cheaper, so we gathered it up.
"That night there were more of the same electric phenomena toward Martinique, but it was not until we got into St. Lucia, where we saw the Roddam, that we learned of the terrible disaster at St. Pierre, and then we knew that our sand was lava dust."
The volcanic ash which fell on the decks of the Horace was ground as fine as rifle powder, and was much finer than that which ' covered the decks of the Etona.
76 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
Returning to the stories told by officers of the Roraima, of which a number have been given, it seems desirable to add here the narrative of Ellery S. Scott, the mate of the ruined ship, since it gives a vivid and striking account of his personal experience of the frightful disaster, with many details of interest not related by others.
MATE SCOTT's GRAPHIC STORY
"We got to St. Pierre in the Roraima,'' began Mr. Scott, "at 6.30 o'clock on Thursday morning. That's the morning the moun- tain and the town and the ships were all sent to hell in a minute.
"All hands had had breakfast. I was standing on the fo'c's'l head trying to make out the marks on the pipes of a ship 'way out and heading for St. Lucia. I wasn't looking at the mountain at all. But I guess the captain was, for he was on the bridge, and the last time I heard him speak was when he shouted, ' Heave up, Mr. Scott ; heave up.' I gave the order to the men, and I think some of them did jump to get the anchor up, but nobody knows what really happened for the next fifteen minutes. I turned around to- ward the captain and then I saw the mountain.
" Did you ever see the tide come into the Bay of Fundy. It doesn't sneak in a little at a time as it does 'round here. It rolls in in waves. That's the way the cloud of fire and mud and white- hot stones rolled down from that volcano over the town and over the ships. It was on us in almost no time, but I saw it and in the same glance I saw our captain bracing himself to meet it on the bridge. He was facing the fire cloud with both hands gripped hard to the bridge rail, his legs apart and his knees braced back stiff. I've seen him brace himself that same way many a time in a tough sea with the spray going mast-head high and green water pouring along the decks.
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 77
" I saw the captain, I say, at the same instant I saw that ruin coming down on us. I don't know why, but that last glimpse of poor Muggah on his bridge will stay with me just as long as I remember St. Pierre and that will be long enough.
" In another instant it was all over for him. As I was looking at him he was all ablaze. He reeled and fell on the bridge with his face toward me. His mustache and eyebrows were gone in a jiffy. His hat had gone, and his hair was aflame, and so were his clothes from head to foot. I knew he was conscious when he fell, by the look in his eyes, but he didn't make a sound.
" That all happened a long way inside of half a minute ; then something new happened. When the wave of fire was going over us, a tidal wave of the sea came out from the shore and did the rest. That wall of rushing water was so high and so solid that it seemed to rise up and join the smoke and flame above. For an instant we could see nothingr but the water and the flame.
*' That tidal wave picked the ship up like a canoe and then smashed her. After one list to starboard the ship righted, but the masts, the bridge, the funnel and all the upper works had gone overboard.
" I had saved myself from fire by jamming a metal ventilator cover over my head and jumping from the fo'c's'l head. Two St. Kitts negroes saved me from the water by grabbing me by the legs and pulling me down into the fo'c's'l after them. Before I could get up three men tumbled in on top of me. Two of them were dead.
" Captain Muggah went overboard, still clinging to the frag- ments of his wrecked bridge. Daniel Taylor, the ship's cooper, and a Kitts native jumped overboard to save him. Taylor managed to push the captain on to a hatch that had floated off from us and then they swam back to the ship for more assistance, but nothing could be
78 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
done for the captain. Taylor wasn't sure he was alive. The last we saw of him or his dead body it was drifting shoreward on that hatch.
" Well, after staying in the fo'c's'l about twenty minutes, I went out on deck. There were just four of us left aboard who could do anything. The four were Thompson, Dan Taylor, Quashee, and myself. It was still raining fire and hot rocks and you could hardly see a ship's length for dust and ashes, but we could stand that. There were burning men and some women and two or three children lying around the deck. Not just burned, but burning, then, when we got to them. More than half the ship's company had been killed in that fir<?t rush of flame. Some had rolled overboard when the tidal wave came and we never saw so much as their bodies. The cook was burned to death in his galley. He had been paring potatoes for dinner and what was left of his right hand held the shank of his potato knife. The wooden handle was in ashes. All that happened to a man in less than a minute. The donkey engineman was killed on deck sitting in front of his boiler. We found parts of some bodies — a hand, or an arm or a leg. Below decks there were some twenty alive.
" The ship was on fire, of course, what was left of it. The stumps of both masts were blazing. Aft she was like a furnace, but forward the flames had not got below deck, so we four carried those who were still alive on deck into the fo'c's'l. All of them were burned and most of them were half strangled.
" One boy, a passenger and just a little shaver [the four-year- old son of the late Clement Stokes, above spoken of] was picked up naked. His hair and all his clothing had been burned off, but he was alive. We rolled him in a blanket and put him in a sailor's bunk. A few minutes later we looked at him and he was dead.
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 79
" My own son's gone, too. It had been his trick at lookout ahead during the dog watch that morning, when we were making for St. Pierre, so I supposed at first when the fire struck us that he was asleep in his bunk and safe. But he wasn't. Nobody could tell me where he was. I don't know whether he was burned to death or rolled overboard and drowned. He was a likely boy. He had been several voyages with me and would have been a master some day. He used to say he'd make me mate.
" After getting all hands that had any life left in them below and 'tended to the best we could, the four of us that were left half way ship-shape started in to fight the fire. We had case oil stowed forward. Thanks to that tidal wave that cleared our decks there wasn't much left to burn, so we got the fire down so's we could live on board with it for several hours more and then the four turned to to knock a raft together out of what timber and truck we could find below. Our boats had gone overboard with the masts and funnel.
PREPARED TO TRUST TO LUCK
"We made that raft for something over thirty that were alive. We put provisions on for two days and rigged up a make-shift mast and sail, for we intended to go to sea. We were only three boats' length from the shore, but the shore was hell itself. We intended to put straight out and trust to luck that the Korona, that was about due at St. Pierre, would pick us up. But we did not have to risk the raft, for about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when we were almost ready to put the raft overboard, the Suchet came along and took us all off. We thought for a minute just after we were wrecked that we were to get help from a ship that passed us. We burned blue lights, but she kept on. We learned afterward that she was the Roddam."
8o MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
Soundings made off Martinique after the explosion showed that earthquake effects of much importance had taken place under the sea bottom, which had been lifted in some places and had sunk in others. While deep crevices had been formed on the land, a still greater effect had seemingly been produced beneath the water. During the explosion the sea withdrew several hundred feet from its shore line, and then came back steaming with fury ; this indi- cating a lift and fall of the ocean bed off the isle. Soundings made subsequently near the island found in one place a depth of 4,000 feet where before it had been only 600 feet deep. The French Cable Company, which was at work trying to repair the cables broken by the eruption, found the bottom of the Caribbean Sea so changed as to render the old charts useless.
New charts will need to be made for future navigation. The changes in sea levels were not confined to the immediate centre of volcanic activity, but extended as far north as Porto Rico, and it was believed that the seismic wave would be found to have altered the ocean bed round Jamaica. Vessels plying between St. Thomas, Martinique, St. Lucia and other islands found it necessary to heave the lead while many miles at sea.
It is estimated that the sea had encroached from ten feet to two miles along the coast of St. Vincent near Georgetown, and that a section on the north of the island had dropped into the sea. Sound- ings showed seven fathoms where before the eruption there were thirty-six fathoms of water. Vessels that endeavored to approach St. Vincent toward the north reported that it was impossible to get nearer than eight miles to the scene of the catastrophe, and that at that distance the ocean was seriously perturbed as from a sub- marine volcano, boiling and hissing continually.
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 8i
In this connection the remarkable experience reported by the officers of the Danish steamship Nordby, on the day preceding the eruption, is of much interest, as seeming to show great convulsions of the sea bottom at a point several hundred miles from Mar- tinique. The following is the story told by Captain Eric Lillien- skjold :
THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF THE " NORDBY "
"On May 5th," the captain said, "we touched at St. Michael's for water. We had had an easy voyage from Girgenti, in Sicily, and we wanted to finish an easy run here. We left St. Michael's on the same day. Nothing worth while talking about occurred until two days afterward — Wednesday, May 7th.
" We were plodding along slowly that day. About noon I took the bridge to make an observation. It seemed to be hotter than ordinary. I shed my coat and vest and got into what little shade there was. As I worked it grew hotter and hotter. I didn't know what to make of it. Along about 2 o'clock in the afternoon it was so hot that all hands got to talking about it. We reckoned that something queer was coming off, but none of us could explain what it was. You could almost see the pitch softening in the seams.
" Then, as quick as you could toss a biscuit over its rail, the Nordby dropped — regularly dropped — three or four feet down into the sea. No sooner did it do this than big waves, that looked like they were coming from all directions at once, began to smash against our sides. This was queerer yet, because the water a min- ute before was as smooth as I ever saw it. I had all hands piped on deck, and we battened down everything loose to make ready for a storm. And we got it all right — the strangest storm you ever
heard tell of. 6
82 MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
" There was something wrong with the sun that afternoon. It grew red and then dark red and then, about a quarter after 2, it went out of sight altogether. The day got so dark that you couldn't see half a ship's length ahead of you. We got our lamps going, and put on our oilskins, ready for a hurricane. All of a sudden there came a sheet of lightning that showed up the whole tumbling sea for miles and miles. We sort of ducked, expecting an awful crash of thunder, but it didn't come. There was no sound except the big waves pounding against our sides. There wasn't a breath of wind.
"Well, sir, at that minute there began the most exciting time I've ever been through, and I've been on every sea on the map for twenty-five years. Every second there'd be waves 15 or 20 feet high, belting us head-on, stern-on and broadside, all at once. We could see them coming, for without any stop at all flash after flash of lightning was blazing all about us.
"Something else we could see, too. Sharks! There were hundreds of them on all sides, jumping up and down in the water. Some of them jumped clear out of it. And sea birds ! A flock of them, squawking and crying, made for our rigging and perched there. They seemed like they were scared to death. But the queerest part of it all was the water itself. It was hot — not so hot that our feet could not stand it when it washed over the deck, but hot enough to make us think that it had been heated by some kind of a fire.
" Well that sort of thing went on hour after hour. The waves, the lightning, the hot water and the sharks, and all the rest of the odd things happening, frightened the crew out of their wits. Some of them prayed out loud — I guess the first time they ever did in their lives. Some Frenchmen, aboard kept running around and
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH 83
yelling, 'Cest le dernier jour !' (This is the last day.) We were all worried. Even the officers beg-an to think that the world was coming to an end. Mighty strange things happen on the sea, but this topped them all.
"I kept to the bridge all night. When the first hour of morn- ing came the storm was still going on. We were all pretty much tired out by that time, but there was no such thing as trying to sleep. The waves still were batting us around and we didn't know whether we were one mile or a thousand miles from shore. At 2 o'clock in the morning all the queer goings on stopped just the way they began — all of a sudden. We lay to until daylight ; then we took our reckonings and started off again. We were about 700 miles off Cape Henlopen.
" No, sir ; you couldn't get me through a thing like that again for $10,000. None of us was hurt, and the old Nordby herself pulled through all right, but I'd sooner stay ashore than see waves without wind and lightning without thunder."
FIERY STREAM CONTAINED POISONOUS GASES
Careful inspection showed that the fiery stream which so com- pletely destroyed St. Pierre must have been composed of poisonous gases, which instantly suftocated every one who inhaled them, and of other gases burning furiously, for nearly all the victims had their hands covering their mouths, or were in some other attitude show- ing that they had perished from suffocation.
It is believed that Mont Pelee threw off a great gasp of some exceedingly heavy and noxious gas, something akin to firedamp, which settled upon the city and rendered the inhabitants insensible. This was followed by the sheet of flame that swept down the side of the mountain. This theory is sustained by the experience of the
84 MONT PELRE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH
survivors who were taken from the ships in the harbor, as they say that their first experience was one of faintness.
The dumb animals were wiser than man, and early took warn- ing of the storm of fire which Mont Pelee was storing up to hurl upon the island. Even before the mountain began to rumble, late in April, live stock became uneasy, and at times were almost uncon- trollable. Cattle lowed in the nigfht. Dog-s howled and souofht the company of their masters, and when driven forth they gave every evidence of fear.
Wild animals disappeared from the vicinity of Mont Pelee. Even the snakes, which at ordinary times are found in great num- bers near the volcano, crawled away. Birds ceased singing and left the trees that shaded the sides of Pelee, A great fear seemed to be upon the island, and though it was shared by the human inhabitants, they alone neglected to protect themselves.
Of the villages in the vicinity of St. Pierre only one escaped, the others suffering the fate of the city. The fortunate one was Le Carbet, on the south, which escaped uninjured, the flood of lava stopping when within two hundred feet of the town, Morne Rouge, a beautiful summer resort, frequented by the people of the island during the hot season as a place of recreation, also escaped. In the height of the season several thousand people gathered there, though at the time of the explosion there were but a few hundred. Though located on an elevation between the city and the crater, it was by great good fortune saved.
The Governor of Martinique, Mr. Moutet, whose precautions to prevent the people fleeing from the city aided to make the work of death complete, was himself among the victims of the burning mountain. With him in this fate was Colonel Dain, com- mander of the troops who formed a cordon round the doomed city.
CHAPTER V.
An Island in Ruins and the Work of Research.
QUICKLY as possible after the terrible disaster of May 8th, which left the formerly thriving and active city of St. Pierre a heap of smoking and blazing ruins, peopled only by the dead, the work of rescue and research began. The French cable-repair ship Pouyer Qiiertier, Captain Thuron, lost no time in starting on a mission of rescue, in which it had to pass through clouds of burning cinders, at the risk of catching fire, in order to reach the terror-stricken people ashore. But the captain succeeded in bringing to Fort de France 456 people, mainly former residents of the village of Le Precheur
This was on Saturday, the 9th, Later this steamer, as the result of other daring trips, succeeded in bringing many more per- sons to Fort de France. On Sunday she rescued 923 persons and piloted the French cruiser Suchet and the Danish cruiser Valkyn^ien, which took on board 1,500 persons. She distributed to the sufferers large quantities of biscuits, milk, wine and cheese.
THE " SUCHET " AT ST. PIERRE
The French cruiser Suchet vjdiS the first to approach the ruined port. This was on the evening of Thursday, the day of the disas- ter. During the earlier part of that day the heat was so intense and the volcano so active, that it was impossible to venture near the town. As evening came on the Suchet, after a heroic battle
85
86 AN ISLAND IN RUINS
with the heat, suffocation and sulphur fumes, made a dash toward the shore, nearing the land close enough to enable her to take off thirty survivors from the burning ships, most of them being horri- bly burned and mutilated. Nine of them died while on their way to the hospital. St. Pierre at that time was an absolute, smoking waste, concealing 30,000 corpses, whose rapid decomposition would necessitate a quick completion of their cremation, which was only partially accomplished by the lava.
On the loth, the Suchet succeeding in getting a landing party ashore, the work of research began. The captain reported the town to be a mere heap of ruins, under which the great multitude of the victims of the catastrophe were buried. On Sunday several steamers, including the government vessel Rubis, started from Fort de France for St. Pierre, ten miles distant. The steamers had on board a government delegate, a number of gendarmes, a detach- ment of regular infantry and several priests. The vessel also car- ried a quantity of firewood, petroleum and quicklime, for use in the cremation of the bodies of the victims of the terrible volcanic out- break of Thursday.
IN THE RUINED CITY
As the ships came near, the sea seemed covered with the wreckage of the vessels sunk in the harbor, while on shore only a few trees, all bent seaward by the force of the volcanic shower, were left standing. When nearing St. Pierre the Rubis met a num- ber of tugs towing lighters filled with refugees. The heat from the smoking lava-covered ruins at St. Pierre was suffocating, and the stench from the corpse-strewn streets was awful. Only a few walls were erect. The hospital clock was found intact, with its hands stopped at 7.50. On all sides were found portions of corpses, which
AN ISLAND IN RUINS ^ 87
were gathered up by the soldiers and gendarmes and burned on one of the public squares. Not a drop of water was procurable ashore. The darkness caused by the clouds of volcanic dust shrouded the town, and continuous subterranean rumblings added to the horror of the scene.
The fort and central quarters of the town were razed to the ground, and were replaced by beds of hot cinders. The iron-grill- work gate of the government offices was alone standing. There was no trace of the streets. Huge heaps of smoking ashes were to be seen on all sides. At the landing place some burned and ruined walls indicated the spot where the custom-house formerly stood, and ruins of larger shops could be seen. In that neighborhood hundreds of dead bodies were found lying in all kinds of attitudes, showing that the victims had met death as if by a lightning stroke. Every vestige of clothing was absent from the charred bodies, and in many cases the abdomens had been burst open by the intense heat. Curiously enough, the features of the dead were generally calm and reposeful, although in some cases terrible fright and agony were depicted. Grim piles of bodies were stacked everywhere, showing that death had stricken them while the crowds were vainly seeking escape from the fiery deluge. On one spot a group of children were found locked in each others' arms.
CREMATING THE DEAD IN HEAPS
Almost the first thing done was to make preparations for the cremation of the dead. Fatigue parties of soldiers built enormous pyres of wood and branches of trees, upon which they heaped the dead bodies by scores and burned them as rapidly as possible.
To facilitate the combustion and to destroy as far as possible the awful odor of burning flesh which came from them, the
88 AN ISLAND IN RUINS
impromptu crematories were heavily soaked with coal tar and petro- leum. So repulsive was the work, owing to the almost insupport- able stench from the already fast decomposing bodies, that the sol- diers had to be forced to act. Great fires were kept going day and night, the glow of the funeral pyres being so great that it could be seen from the island of St. Lucia.
As the fires which consumed the city gradually burnt them- selves out, it became possible to dig down into the ruins, thus revealing new horrors which had hitherto been buried beneath the volcanic ash and the fallen walls. Ashes and cinders, in places six feet deep, hid the lines of the streets, and covered thousands of de- caying corpses.
The path of the volcanic torrent which swept over St. Pierre was marked out in a strange manner. The vicinity of the shore, where vessels anchored, had been swept by a whirlwind of volcanic gas, which ripped, tore and shattered everything in its passage, but left few traces of cinders behind. The tremendous force of the volcanic avalanche was shown by the fact that walls which had stood half a century were leveled like pasteboard. The place was as a city swept by a cyclone of fire. The deluge must have rushed upon the town with resistless force. On the other hand, the fort, centre and adjoining ports of St. Pierre were buried under a thick bed of cinders, which had consumed everything beneath it. The vaults of the bank of Martinique, at the head of what had been the Rue de L'Hospital, were found intact. They contained $500,000 in specie and other securities, which was sent to Fort de France for safe keeping. An effort was made also to reach the vaults of the government treasury, in the hope that a large amount of money and other valuables, deposited by the principal merchants of the city, might be saved, but this treasure lay under a heap of volcanic debris six to eight yards deep, and had to be left for later research.
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Only three persons were taken alive from the ruined city, and of these two quickly died. One of these was the negress Fillotte, of whose rescue and subsequent death we have spoken. A second was a woman named Laurent, who was employed as a servant at St. Pierre in the household of M. Gabriel, and who was amono- those taken to the hospital in Fort de France. In describing her experiences she said that on the day of the terrible disaster she heard a loud report, and thereupon fainted. When she regained her senses a few hours later she was horribly burned. Glancing around, she saw two members of the Gabriel family still alive, but they died before assistance could reach them.
She lived for some time after being taken to the hospital, and was conscious while under the care of the physicians, but died with- out being able to impart any additional information.
In truth, only a single human being escaped from the city after the explosion in condition to survive, and he did so only after passing through a living death. This man, Joseph Surtout by name, was a negro murderer, who was locked in a cell so far under ground that the gases, as well as the flames, failed to reach him. There he remained for four days before his cries were heard.
During these terrible days he was without food and water, almost without air. He saw nothing, his cell being without a window, but he knew from the noise and heat that something ex- traordinary had happened. He shouted for aid, and as the days passed he commended his soul to God, expecting death.
On the fourth day, though he had lost track of time, he heard voices and shouted and prayed until he had attracted the people. The cell door was broken open and his tomb gave up its dead. As soon as the cell door was open he dashed away like one crazed by his sufferings. Though sadly shaken, he was physically strong.
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It seems a singular fact, a remarkable dispensation of Pro- vidence shall we say, that the only survivor from the overwhelmed city was one condemned to death by human law for his crimes, yet saved alone of the many thousands who made it their home to tell the story of its awful fate. Where man had proposed, God had disposed. Certainly, after his four days of terrible suffering it would seem that he should be relieved from further penalty from his his crime.
REMARKABLE INCIDENTS
Various strange and incomprehensible incidents were observed at St. Pierre. The charred remains of a woman, with a silk hand- kerchief unburned and in perfect condition held to her lips, were found there. The crisp bodies of girls were also found, the shoes they wore being unhurt. Side by side with bodies burned to a crisp were bodies but slightly burned. Some articles of clothing on the dead were scarcely scorched. Purses were found almost intact.
Many of the bodies were so burned as to make identification impossible, but in other cases the opposite was the case, some being identified by the searching parties, which were all under military control and their work conducted under orders, while mili- tary rule was established in the town to prevent vandals from work- ing and to protect such property as had not been destroyed. Pillagers, indeed, were quickly at work, though orders had been given to shoot down any person who was seen robbing a body. Some of these belonged to the inland district, but others had come from Fort de France in boats in search of bootv from the dead.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS STEAMER
The Steamer sent by the Associated Press from Guadeloupe reached St. Pierre at an early hour on Sunday morning. The fol- lowing is the story told by those on board : —
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The island of Martinique, with its lofty hills, was hidden behind a huge veil of violet or leaden-colored haze. Enormous quantities of the wreckage of large and small ships and houses strewed the surface of the sea. Huge trees, and too often bodies, with flocks of sea gulls soaring above and hideous sharks fighting about them, were floating here and there. From behind the vol- canic veil came blasts of hot wind, mingled with others icy cold. At Le Precheur, five miles north of St. Pierre, men and women in canoes, frantic to get away, begged for a passage on the steamer. The whole north end of the island was covered with a silver-grey coating of ashes resembling dirty snow. Furious blasts of fire, ashes and mud swept over the steamer, but, finally, St. Pierre was reached.
The city of St. Pierre stretched nearly two miles along the water front and half a mile back to a cliff at the base of the vol- cano. The houses of the richer French families were built of stone. The still smoking volcano towered above the ash-covered hills. The ruins were burning in many places, and frightful odors of burned flesh filled the air.
With great difficulty a landing was effected. Not one house was left intact. Viscid heaps of mud, of brighter ashes, or piles of volcanic stones were seen on every side. The streets could hardly be traced. Here and there amid the ruins were heaps of corpses. Almost all the faces were downward. In one corner twenty-two bodies of men, women and children were mingled in one awful mass, arms and legs protruding as the hapless beings had fallen in the last struggles of death's agony.
Through the middle of the old Place Bertin ran a tiny stream, the remains of the River Gayave. Great trees, with roots upward and scorched by fire, were strewn in every direction. Huge blocks and still hot stones were scattered about. From under one large stone
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the arm of a white woman protruded. Most notable was the utter silence and the overpowering stench from the thousands of dead. Careful inspection indicated that the fiery stream which so completely destroyed St. Pierre must have been composed of poisonous gases, which instantly suffocated every one who inhaled them, and of other gases burning furiously, for nearly all the victims had their hands covering their mouths or were in some other attitude showing that they had sought relief from suffocation. All the bodies were carbonized or roasted.
SIGNOR PARAVICINO SEEKS HIS DAUGHTER.
Fortunately, although Mont Pelee continued in a state of eruption for many days, the winds became southerly and the smoke and the greater part of the heavier matter thrown out was borne away to the northward. This somewhat relieved the working par- ties in St. Pierre, and made a more careful examination of the ruins possible. A trip was made through the ruined city and through the adjacent villages with the searching party organized by Signor Paravicino, the Italian Consul at Barbados, whose daugh- ter was visiting there, and who perished in the disaster. There was some doubt at first concerning the identity of the remains, but this was set at rest by relatives and friends identifying the clothing. This was another example of the curious effects of the fire that swept over the town, bodies being burned beyond all recognition, but the clothing of flimsy material being little damaged.
The body of Signor Paravicino's daughter was found near the village of Carbet, a suburb of St. Pierre. The scenes around the residence where the girl had been visiting were worse than in St. Pierre itself. In the latter place the victims were mostly covered with ashes and other debris. Near Carbet were found 500 bodies
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that were terribly distorted and in an advanced state of decompo- sition. These bodies were counted around the house in which Signorina Paravicino was found, and on the adjacent land. Nearly all the dead were lying on their faces on the ground. Those found in the ruins of dwellings were badly charred.
INCIDENTS OF THE CATASTROPHE.
The body of a woman was found in a nearby stream, to which she had apparently fled in the hope of saving herself from the fiery flood, but even the waters were hot, and no doubt she perished with great suffering and agony. A large heap of bodies was found in one spot. They were apparently those of servants, who had huddled together in great terror of the destruction which overtook them. A large and stately residence close by, but shielded partly by a hill on the St. Pierre side, escaped almost untouched. The win- dows and inside blinds of this solitary house were gone, but inside the furniture, papers, books, clothing and flooring were mostly unscathed.
The only living thing seen in this district was an ox, thin as a skeleton. While the body of Signorina Paravicino was being pre- pared for removal this animal stalked slowly through the wreckage to the beach, where it drank sea water and then went back up the hillside. By the roadside, the remains of a man and horse were passed, and others were visible lying about.
Further on was seen the body of a man at the foot of a statue of the Virgin, he apparently having been killed while praying. A large statue of the Virgin on the hill above St. Pierre was hurled yards distant from its base. This, together with the fact that huge trees were torn up by their roots and laid flat, scarcely one being left standing, and other indications, show that the wave of fire must
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have passed over this section of the island at hurricane velocity. Every house in St. Pierre, not excepting those that were most solidly built of stone, was absolutely in ruins. The streets were piled twelve feet high with debris and hundreds of dead bodies could be seen in every direction.
The wrecked cathedral was visited, or rather the site where the cathedral had stood. A portion of the tower was standing. The large bell lay in the centre of the ruins. The greater part of the altar had been destroyed, but the golden chalices were still there, damaged, however, by falling debris. In one large chalice were seen the ashes of what had been the Host. A small chalice was full of wafers, not one of which was even scorched.
ESCAPE OF A FAMILY
It is known that many persons who sought refuge in the cathe- dral perished, but their bodies were scarcely visible, being covered with the debris. When other places were visited, including the sites of the club, the bank, the bourse, the telegraph office, and the principal shops, everywhere was the same scene of desolation and death, such as eye of man had never seen, unless it were when Pompeii and its ruins were uncovered centuries after the eruption. At what was formerly the police station, there was a large pile of bodies lying face downward as if the victims had fallen while in the act of running to escape the fate impending over them.
Of the residents of St. Pierre, there seems to have been only one family that fled from the doomed city on the morning of its destruc- tion before the explosion. This was that of Ferdinand Clerc, a wealthy inhabitant of the island, and Mayor of Trinite, who with his wife and four children succeeded in escaping.
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On the morning of May 8, M. Clerc noticed with alarm that the rumbhngs from Mont Pelee were more pronounced than they had been up to that time. The barometer in his house also fluttered violently, and he at once ordered his servants to harness mules to his carriage and prepare for flight. He advised all his friends to hasten away also, but his advice was disregarded, and he left behind him at his house twenty-eight persons who had gathered there at his call, and whom he advised to get away as quickly as they could.
MR. PRENTIS WARNED IN VAIN.
As Clerc and his family were leaving St. Pierre he saw Mr. Prentis, the American Consul, standing with Mrs. Prentis in front of his house. He called out to Prentis and warned him to flee the city at once, but the Consul only laughed and waved his hand, as he answered: " Oh, there is no danger ; don't be afraid."
When Clerc reached Morne Rouge, distant from St. Pierre about six miles, he looked back, and to his horror saw a huge mass of slate-colored stones and ashes burst from Mont Pelee and tumble down on St. Pierre. This was immediately followed by a great wall of flame, which seemed to rise and topple over on the doomed town. The whole thing lasted not more than two minutes. So sharply defined was the wall of flame that a bull caught on the edge of its track was roasted to a crisp on one side and not a hair of the animal was singed on the other.
A gardener at the village of Morne Rouge saw, at the moment of the disaster, seven luminous points on Mont Pelee. He says he had the impression of being violently drawn toward the volcano by a powerful current of air. Then the mountain opened, according to the description of the gardener, and flung tornadoes of fire at St. Pierre.
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At the time of the explosion of the mountain — for the eruption can be Hkened to nothing else — a man named Lasserne, with a companion, was entering St. Pierre in a small carriage drawn by a pair of mules. The mules were instantly killed and Lasserne and his friend were severely burned, but the coachman, who was driving the carriage, and who was between the mules and the two men, was not burned or injured in the least.
PILLAGERS IN THE RUINS
As the work of exploration of the ruined city proceeded, the bands of pillagers already spoken of became bolder and more numerous. A fierce fight took place between the troops and the looters, and little mercy was shown the heartless wretches when caught. Two of them, who fled when discovered at their work by the troops, were shot, and a considerable number, who were arrested and taken to Fort de France, were sentenced to five years' impris- onment. There were several women among them, who received lighter sentences.
While coming to Fort de France, the U. S. vessel Potomac picked up a boat containing five colored and one white man whose pockets were filled with coin and jewelry, the latter evidently strip- ped from the fingers of the dead. These men were arrested and turned over to the commander of the French cruiser Suchet for punishment. An English officer, who took some of the sacred vessels from the cathedral, was suspected of an attempt at robbery, though it proved that his purpose was to preserve them.
In spite of the almost complete destruction, valuables were everywhere exposed, rich temptations for thieving invaders Goods in the storehouses had been burned and destroyed, but much that was of value remained to be preyed upon by thieves. In
• AN ISLAND IN RUINS 97
the search of the ruins many safes of business houses were found open, some of them probably forced open by thieves.
After pillaging had been put down in St. Pierre by the vigi- lance of the guards, it made its appearance in the rural districts, where many houses had been abandoned by the inmates. A number of these were robbed and burned. The country was not policed, and all persons were obliged to go armed as a protection against the bands of negro robbers who terrorized the district. Sugar-cane fields were burned and people openly assaulted, the outlaws adding new terrors to those which the islanders had so recently experienced. Soldiers were sent with orders to take some measures to put a stop to these villainous proceedings.
FLIGHT OF THE COUNTRY PEOPLE
While the citizens of St. Pierre were whelmed under indis- criminating death, the inhabitants of the country districts farther removed from the fire-spouting mountain, yet on whose homes and fields thick dust and cinders were pouring down in devastating layers, fled in terror from their dwellings, making their way towards the seaport of Fort de France as the nearest place of safety.
Hundreds from the seashore districts were lost in a maddened flight from the island, which they attempted in small boats. From the survivors it was learned that in the insane panic that followed the eruption the people seized upon even the frailest boats to get away. In this way many were lost who might otherwise have been saved. Numbers were taken off by the vessels that sought the scene of disaster, but these were insufficient to rescue the multitude of fugitives.
The fear that the end of the world had come had seized upon nearly all, and the only thought of many of them was to get off 7
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the stricken island, which seemed to them to be enveloped in fire from one end to the other. In the villages near St. Pierre visited by the relief parties, the refugees pleaded to be taken to Fort de France. They were half-clad, wild-eyed and hungry. The experiences of the past four days had preyed terribly upon them. Some of them were hysterical.
Thousands of refugees gathered in a few days at Fort de France, clamoring for food, of which the supply was far too limited for the demand. The Potomac brought a ton of supplies from San Juan, partly made up of codfish and flour, but days passed before the danger of famine was relieved by the coming of food vessels from more distant ports. Many deaths occurred, and the physicians who reached the island found abundant work to do.
Every praise was given United States Consul Ayme, who worked indefatigably to succor the survivors. He bandaged the limbs of the wounded and worked without sleep and without food until thoroughly exhausted by his labors of charity and bene- ficence.
THE LURID WORK OF MONT PELEE
Meanwhile in St. Pierre work in the ruins was dangerous and was prosecuted with the greatest difficulty. Crumbling walls were a serious menace to working parties, many urging that what re- mained of the city should be levelled with dynamite. Even when bodies were found their identification was difficult or impossible. Inhabitants of districts near St. Pierre were forced to quit their homes on account of the odors from the dead and gaseous emana- tions from the volcanic craters, and the whole situation was attended with every feature of repulsion and peril.
The death-dealing crater, though it had quieted somewhat after the great eruption, still sent up ashes and flames which kept
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the people in a state of alarm. After the lapse of a week its fright- ful energy showed signs of renewal and the terror of the people increased. A press correspondent on May 16 sent the following report : —
" I passed the island of Martinique this morning in the Royal Mail steamship Ware. A new volcano had evidently broken out to the north of Mont Pelee. We followed the usual course from Dominica to St. Lucia and could see the mountain sending up dense black smoke.
" As we approached nearer to the leeward of the volcano the land became hidden by the smoke, but a red glow shone through the smoke down to the water's edge. I could plainly see a shower of sand and ashes falling, and the smell of sulphur was very strong. It became so offensive that it made our helmsman and the captain ill and forced them to run the steamer five miles out to sea to avoid the sulphurous fumes. When we were well out of the sulphur- laden atmosphere we turned and ran in toward St. Pierre.
' Mont Pelee had evidently been throwing out large quantities of lava since I saw the volcano last. I got a good view of St. Pierre and the countryside. I could see where new ravines had been formed, fissures opened, and old ones filled up. The whole face of the country was changing. The scene of desolation was indes- cribable. A nearer view of St. Pierre shows its ruins in ghastly nakedness."
NEW VIOLENCE OF ERUPTION
On the succeeding days the violence of the eruption increased, and the people of Morne Rouge, who had hitherto escaped injury, fled for their lives, eight hundred of them starting to walk through the mountains to Fort de France, fifteen miles away. Others of them sought St. Pierre, where they begged frantically to be taken
lOO AN ISLAND IN RUINS
off by the ships in the harbor. The panic even reached Fort de France, on which city thick showers of dust fell all afternoon and night, while many thousands of people rushed in a panic through the streets, seeking to escape what seemed impending ruin.
Ashes were spouted in great clouds from the crater all day on the 1 8th. The explosion began on the early morning, when a black column rose above Mont Pelee, accompanied by internal rumblines and a tremor of the earth that sent the sea back from the land in powerful waves.
This column was first caught by a current of air that carried it northward. Then an upper air current swept it back in the op- posite direction. Thus it made an immense and well-formed " T," the base of which rested in a cup of flame on the crest of the volcano, from which it sprang. Then the wind veered, and a mantle of darkness was swept westward across the island, enveloping Fort de France, upon which volcanic dust fell to a depth of more than an inch and a half,
So heavy was the dust that filled the air that respiration be- came a labor, and a fear of suffocation came upon the inhabitants. Great alarm continued for more than four hours, and it was not until the cloud of ashes blew out to sea that confidence was re- stored.
LIKE A GIGANTIC BLAST FURNACE
All night the summit of Mont Pelee had the appearance of a gigantic blast furnace, at which great forces were working. Flames shot skyward in sheets that at times lighted up the entire island. For a few minutes the fires would drop back into the mouth of the crater, only to reissue with redoubled force.
On the 19th, the American cruiser Ci7icinnati, the naval tug Potomac^ and the British cruiser Indefatigable, left Fort de France
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for St. Pierre, in an endeavor to recover the remains of Thomas T. Prentis, the American Consul, and James Japp, the British Con- sul, whose bodies had been found at their respective consulates, after a long and baffling search. The purpose was to take them to Fort de France for a military funeral.
On their arrival near the ruined city they found the volcano in so frightful a state of activity as to render their enterprise a very perilous one. A party was landed from the Potomac, but before the cruiser could anchor, there came several tremendous explosions. Immense quantities of lava poured from the crater,- and clouds of dust darkened the sky. The Indefatigable at once put to sea.
With steam up the Potomac stood ready to run as soon as the rescue party could get out from shore and on board. To the gen- eral din it added its note of alarm. The party of rescuers ran along the beach and were taken off by a boat from the tug. They were barely in time. As the steamship got well under way, another flood of fire poured down from Pelee, and a broad stream of lava ran into the sea, while out of the sky rained a storm of rocks and ashes.
A DARING RESCUE PARTY
In spite of the threatening aspect of the volcano, it was deter- mined later in the day to make another attempt to recover the bodies of Mr. Prentis and Mr. Japp. The searching party was divided into two squads. One, led by Ensign Miller, went to the site of the American Consulate, and soon had the body of Mr. Prentis encased in a metallic and hermetically sealed cofifin. Six stal- wart fellows shouldered the body and started with it for the landing.
In the meantime, another party, led by Lieutenant McCor- mick, of the Potomac, had proceeded to the British Consulate, about half a mile to the northward of the American Consulate,
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Fortunately, this was within view of the crater of Mont Pelee. Lieutenant McCormick saw a column of smoke and fire belch from the volcano, down the side of which a stream of molten lava flowed. Directing his men to make all haste back to the Potomac^ the Lieutenant turned aside to give warning to the party which was carrying away the body of the American Consul. " For God's sake, boys, get to the boat quick if you would save your lives ! " he gasped. " The volcano has exploded, and destruction is upon us." At that instant there was adeafenino- crash of thunder. It almost seemed as though scores of thunderbolts had been forced into one. As it died away the loud siren of the Indefatigable, which was in the roadstead, screamed a warning. The British cruiser almost immediately put out to sea at top speed. Without cessation the whistle of the Potomac was blowing. There was another rumble, and the sky was filled with lightning. Then Mont Pelee cast upward a vast column, a mile or more high. By a fortunate turn of the wind the lives of all in the party were saved. The ashes, gas, smoke, and stones, instead of pouring immediately upon them, were car- ried out over the sea.
BRAVERY OF THE SAILORS.
Working among the ruins were a few Frenchmen, who had remained ashore after their fellows had fled in fright. These men became panic-stricken and some of them were in hysterics. They fell upon their knees, and prayed to be saved from the destruction which they feared was about to fall upon them. Under the circum- stances, the presence of mind and bravery of the American sailors was worthy of the greatest praise. They refused to put down their burden.
As rapidly as possible the sailors made their way over the debris to the shore. Once one of them stumbled. His fellows
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waited until he could recover himself, when all went on together, still bearing the coffined body of the Consul. Half a mile was covered in this manner. Each minute the sky darkened. The heat was beyond comprehension. In the air was volcanic dust that made respiration hard labor.
Finally the distance was covered, and at the end it was discov- ered that, after all, the body would have to be temporarily aban- doned. Heavy seas were sweeping shoreward. It was with great difficulty that the party was taken on board by the Potomac, but it was accomplished safely and just in time.
A MOST AWE-INSPIRING SIGHT
Straight out to sea for five miles ran the Poto^nac, while all eyes watched the eruption, the grandest and most awe-inspiring sight ever witnessed by man. There was an inner column of fire that reached perpendicularly into the air. About it was a funnel- shaped mass of ashes and gas, that could be penetrated by the eye only when the flames burned brightest.
Several new craters seemed to have been formed, and from them lava was flowing down to the ocean. As the molten mass reached the water great clouds of steam were raised, and the sinister hissing could be heard amid the roar of the eruption.
When the Potomac had been put beyond the apparent danger- zone an observation was taken. Then the ship was turned up the coast and was run in under the column of death. As close as she could be sent without courting destruction, the Potomac went back towards the stream of lava. All about her the sea was boiling, and the steam that came up over the sides was so dense as to make it all but impossible to see through it. Again, a turn was made seaward, but as it was seen that the wind had shifted the
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danger from St. Pierre, she ran back to the landing. A party of sailors went ashore and brought off the body. The Potomac returned with it to Fort de France, where all were then in a panic. Owing to the hasty retreat that was made from the British Consulate, which lay a mile back from the shore, the body of Mr. Japp, which had been encoffined, was not recovered.
BURIAL OF CONSUL PRENTIS
Never before was there such a burial as was given to the body of Thomas T. Prentis, the American Consul at St. Pierre. The body, recovered from the ruins (as we have seen) at the risk of the lives of the men who were sent ashore from the Potoifiac, was taken to the cemetery back of Fort de France. There were brief services at the grave, led by Captain McClean, of the Cincinnati. About the erave stood officers, marines and sailors from the Cincinnati and the Potomac. The gloom was made more intense by the knowledge held by each one present that his own life was in imminent danger.
An ominous salute was fired by the volcano that had brought destruction upon the Consul. While the service was being read there was a succession of deep, sullen detonations that might have come from great guns belonging to a mighty fleet. As the grave was being filled a cloud of ashes came over the city, and a dark- ness as of night followed. The volcano had taken part in the services over the body of its victim.
CHAPTER VI.
St. Vincent Island and Mont Soufriere in 1812.
AMONG all the islands of the Caribbees St. Vincent is unique in natural wonders and beauties. Situated about ninety-five miles west of Barbados, it has a length of eighteen and a width of eleven miles, the whole mass being largely composed of a single peak which rises from the ocean's bed. From north to south volcanic hills traverse its length, their ridges intersected by fertile and beautiful valleys.
A ridge of mountains crosses the island, dividing it into eastern and western parts. Kingstown, the capital, a town of 8,000 inhabi- tants, is on the southward side and extends alono- the shores of a beautiful bay, with mountains gradually rising behind it in the form of a vast amphitheatre. Three streets, broad and lined with good houses, run parallel to the water-front. There are many other intersecting highways, some of which lead back to the foot- hills, from which good roads ascend the mountains.
The majority of the houses have red tile roofing and a goodly number of them are of stone, one story high, with thick walls after the Spanish style — the same types of houses that were in St. Pierre and which are not unlike the old Roman houses which in all stages of ruin and semi-preservation are found in Pompeii to this day.
Behind the general group of the houses of the town loom the Governor's residence and the buildings of the botanical gardens which overlook the town.
105
io6 ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE
Kingstown is the trading centre and the town of importance in the island. It contains the churches and chapels of five Protestant denominations and a number of excellent schools. Away from Kingstown, and the smaller settlement of Georgetown, the popula- tion is almost wholly rural, occupying scattered villages which con- sist of negro huts clustering around a few substantial buildings or of cabins grouped about old plantation buildings somewhat after the ante-bellum fashion in our own Southern States.
One of the tragedies of the West Indies was the sinking of old Port Royal, the resort of buccaneers, in 1692. The harbor of Kingstown is commonly supposed to cover the site of the old settle- ment. There is a tradition that a buoy for many years was attached to the spire of a sunken church in order to warn mariners. Three thousand persons perished in the disaster.
DESCENDANTS OF ORIGINAL INDIAN POPULATION
The northern portion of the island, that desolated by the recent volcanic eruption, was inhabited by people living in the manner just described, the great majority of them being negroes. The total population of the island is about 45,000, of whom 30,000 are Africans and about 3,000 Europeans, the remainder being nearly all Asiatics. There are, or rather were, a number of Caribs, the descendants of the original warlike Indian population of these islands. Many of these live in St. Vincent, though there are others in Dominico. As their residence was in the northern section of the island, the volcano seems to have completed the work for the Caribs of this island which the Spaniard long ago began. These Caribs were really half-breds, having amalgamated with the negroes.
Many of the blacks own land of their own, raising arrow root, which, since the decay of the sugar industry, is the chief export.
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In an island only eighteen miles long by eleven broad there is not room for any distinctly marked mountain range. The whole of St. Vincent, in fact, is a fantastic tumble of hills, culminating in the volcanic ridge which runs lengthwise of the oval-shaped island. The culminating peak of the great volcanic mass, for St. Vincent is nothing more, is Mont Garou, of which La Soufriere is a sort of lofty excrescence in the northwest, 4,048 feet high, and flanking the main peak at some distance away.
It may be said that all the volcanic mountains in this part of the West Indies have what the people call a "soufriere" — a " sulphur pit," or " sulphur crater " — the name coming, as in the case of past disturbances of Mont Pelee, from the strong stench of sulphuretted hydrogen which issues from them when the volcano becomes agitated.
In 18 1 2 it was La Soufriere adjacent to Mont Garou which broke loose on the island of St. Vincent, and it is the same Soufriere which again has devastated the island and has bombarded Kingstown with rocks, lava and ashes.
The old crater of Mont Garou has long been extinct, and, like the old crater of Mont Pelee, near St. Pierre, it had far down in its depths, surrounded by sheer cliffs from 500 to 800 feet high, a lake. Glimpses of the lake of Mont Garou are difficult to get, owing to the thick verdure growing about the dangerous edges of the precipices, but those who have seen it describe it as a beautiful sheet of deep blue water.
THE APPEARANCF OF THE SOUFRIERE
Previous to the eruption of 18 12 the appearance of the Soufriere was most interesting. The crater was half a mile in diameter and five hundred feet in depth. In its centre was a
loS ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE
conical hill, fringed with shrubs and vines ; at whose base were two small lakes, one sulphurous, the other pure and tasteless. This lovely and beautiful spot was rendered more interesting by the singularly melodious notes of a bird, an inhabitant of these upper solitudes, and altogether unknown to the other parts of the island — hence called, or supposed to be, " invisible," as it had never been seen. (It is of interest to state that Frederick A. Ober, in a visit to the island some twenty years ago, succeeded in obtaining speci- mens of this previously unknown bird.) From the fissures of the cone a thin white smoke exuded, occasionally tinged with a light blue flame. Evergreens, flowers and aromatic shrubs clothed the steep sides of the crater, which made, as the first indication of the eruption on April 27, 18 12, a tremulous noise in the air. A severe concussion of the earth followed, and then a column of thick black smoke burst from the crater.
THE ERUPTION OF I 8 I 2
The eruption which followed these premonitory symptoms was one of the most terrific which had occurred in the West Indies up to that time. It was the culminating event which seemed to relieve a pressure within the earth's crust which extended from the Missis- sippi Valley to Caracas, Venezuela, producing terrible effects in the latter place. Here, thirty-five days before the volcanic explo- sion, the ground was rent and shaken by a frightful earthquake which hurled the city in ruins to the ground and killed ten thousand of its inhabitants in a moment of time.
La Soufriere made the first historic display of its hidden powers in 1 718, when lava poured from its crater. A far more violent demonstration of its destructive forces was that above mentioned. On his occasion the eruption lasted for three days, ruining a number of
ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE 109
•
the estates in the vicinity and destroying many lives. Myriads of tons of ashes, cinders, pumice and scoriae, hurled from the crater, fell in every section of the island. Volumes of sand darkened the air, and woods, ridges and cane fields were covered with light gray ashes, which speedily destroyed all vegetation. The sun for three days seemed to be in a total eclipse, the sea was discolored and the ground bore a wintry appearance from the white crust of fallen ashes.
Carib natives who lived at Morne Rond fled from their houses to Kingstown. As the third day drew to a close flames sprang pyra- midically from the crater, accompanied by loud thunder and electric flashes, which rent the column of smoke hanging over the volcano. Eruptive matter pouring from the northwest side plunged over the cliff, carrying down rocks and woods in its course. The island was shaken by an earthquake and bombarded with showers of cinders and stones, which set houses on fire and killed many of the natives.
THE TERRIBLE EARTHQUAKE AT CARACAS
For nearly two years before this explosion earthquakes had been common, and sea and land had been agitated from the valley of the Mississippi to the coasts of Venezuela and the mountains of New Grenada, and from the Azores to the West Indies. On March 26, 181 2, these culminated in the terrible tragedy, spoken of above, of which Humboldt gives us a vivid account.
On that day the people of the Venezuelan city of Caracas were assembled in the churches, beneath a still and blazing sky, when the earth suddenly heaved and shook, like a great monster waking from slumber, and in a single minute 10,000 people were buried beneath the walls of churches and houses, which tumbled in hideous ruin upon their heads. The same earthquake made itself
I lo ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE
felt along the whole line of the Northern Cordilleras, working terri- ble destruction, and shook the earth as far as Santa Fe de Bogota and Honda, i8o leagues from Caracas, This was a preliminary symptom of the internal disorder of the earth.
While the wretched inhabitants of Caracas who had e-'caped the earthquake were dying of fever and starvation, and seeking among villages and farms places of safety from the renewed earth- quake shocks, the almost forgotten volcano of St. Vincent was muttering in suppressed wrath. For twelve months it had given warning, by frequent shocks of the earth, that it was making ready to play its part in the great subterranean battle. On the 27th of April its deep-hidden powers broke their bonds, and the conflict between rock and fire began.
THE MOUNTAIN STONES A HERD-BOY
The first intimation of the outbreak was rather amusing than alarming. A negro boy was herding cattle on the mountain side. A stone fell near him. Another followed. He fancied that some other boys were pelting him from the cliff above, and began throw- ing stones upward at his fancied concealed tormentors. But the stones fell thicker, among them some too large to be thrown by any human hand. Only then did the little fellow awake to the fact that it was not a boy like himself, but the mighty mountain, that was flinging these stones at him. He looked up and saw that the black column which was rising from the crater's mouth was no longer harmless vapor, but dust, ashes and stones. Leaving the cattle to their fate, he fled for his life, while the mighty cannon of the Titans roared behind him as he ran. For three days and nights this continued ; then, on the 30th, a stream of lava poured over the crater's rim and rushed downward, reaching the sea in four hours, and the great eruption was at an end.
ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE m
On the same day, says Humboldt, at a distance of more than 200 leagues, "the inhabitants not only of Caracas, but of Calabozo, situated in the midst of the Lianos, over a space of 4,000 square leagues, were terrified by a subterranean noise which resembled frequent discharges of the heaviest cannon. It was accompanied by no shock, and, what is very remarkable, was as loud on the coast as at eighty leagues' distance inland, and at Caracas, as well as at Calabozo, preparations were made to put the place in defence against an enemy who seemed to be advancing with heavy artillery."
It was no enemy that man could deal with. Fortunately, it confined its assault to deep noises, and desisted from earthquake shocks. Similar noises were heard in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and here also without shocks. The internal thunder was the signal of what was taking place on St. Vincent. With this last warning sound the trouble, which had lasted so long, was at an end. The earthquakes which for two years had shaken a sheet of the earth's surface larger than half Europe, were stilled by the eruption of St. Vincent's volcanic peak.
BARBADOS COVERED WITH ASHES
Northeast of the original crater of the Soufriere a new one was formed which was a half mile in diameter and five hundred feet deep. The old crater was in time transformed into a beautiful blue lake, as above stated, walled in by ragged cliffs to a height of eight hundred feet.
It was looked upon as a remarkable circumstance that although the air was perfectly calm during the eruption, Barbados, which is ninety-five miles to the windward, was covered inches deep with ashes. The inhabitants there and on other neighboring islands were
112 ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE
terrified by the darkness, which continued for four hours and a half. Troops were called under arms, the supposition from the con- tinued noise being that hostile fleets were in an engagement.
The movement of the ashes to windward, as just stated, was viewed as a remarkable phenomenon, and is cited by Elise Reclus, in " The Ocean," to show the force of different aerial currents ; "On the first day of May, 1 8 1 2, when the northeast trade-wind was in all its force, enormous quantities of ashes obscured the atmosphere above the Island of Barbados, and covered the ground with a thick layer. One would have supposed that they came from the volca- noes of the Azores, which were to the northeast ; nevertheless they were cast up by the crater in St. Vincent, one hundred miles to the west. It is therefore certain that the debris had been hurled, by the force of the eruption, above the moving sheet of the trade- winds into an aerial river proceeding in a contrary direction." For this it must have been hurled miles high into the air, till caught by the current of the anti-trade winds.
KINGSLEY's visit to saint VINCENT
From Charles Kingsley's "At Last" we extract, from the ac- count of the visit of the author to St. Vincent, some interesting matter concerning the 181 2 eruption and its effect on the moun- tain ; also its influence upon distant Barbados, as just stated,
" The strangest fact about this eruption was, that the mountain did not make use of its old crater. The original vent must have become so jammed and consolidated, in the few years between 1785 and 1 81 2, that it could not be reopened, even by a steam force the vastness of which may be guessed at from the vastness of the area which it had shaken for two years. So, when the eruption was over, it was found that the old crater-lake, incredible as it may
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(copyright, J . Murray Jordan.
ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE 113
seem, remained undisturbed, so far as has been ascertained ; but close to it, and separated only by a knife-edge of rock some 700 feet in height, and so narrow that, as I was assured by one who had seen it, it is dangerous to crawl along it, a second crater, nearly as large as the first, had been blasted out, the bottom of which, in like manner, was afterward filled with water.
" I regretted much that I could not visit it. Three points I longed to ascertain carefully — the relative heights of the water in the two craters ; the height and nature of the spot where the lava stream issued ; and, lastly, if possible, the actual causes of the locally famous Rabacca, or ' Dry River,' one of the largest streams in the island, which was swallowed up during the eruption, at a short distance from its source, leaving its bed an arid gully to this day. But it could not be, and I owe what- little I know of the sum- mit of the soufriere principally to a most intelligent and gentleman- like young Wesleyan minister, whose name has escaped me. He described vividly, as we stood together on the deck, looking up at the volcano, the awful beauty of the twin lakes, and of the clouds which, for months together, whirl in and out of the cups in fantas- tic shapes before the eddies of the trade wind.
BLACK SUNDAY AT BARBADOS
" The day after the explosion, ' Black Sunday,' gave a proof of, though no nieasure of, the enormous force which had been ex- erted. Eighty miles to windward lies Barbados. All Saturday a heavy cannonading had been heard to the eastward. The English and French fleets were surely engaged. The soldiers were called out ; the batteries manned ; but the cannonade died away, and all went to bed in wonder. On the ist of May the clocks struck six, but the sun did not, as usual in the tropics, answer to the call.
8
114 'ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE
The darkness was still intense, and grew more intense as the morn- ing wore on. A slow and silent rain of impalpable dust was falling- over the whole island. The negroes rushed shrieking into the streets. Surely the last day was come. The white folk caught (and little blame to them) the panic, and some began to pray who had not prayed for years. The pious and the educated (and there were plenty of both in Barbados) were not proof against the infec- tion. Old letters describe the scene in the churches that morninor as hideous — prayers, sobs, and cries, in Stygian darkness, from trembling crowds. And still the darkness continued and the dust fell.
INCIDENTS AT BARBADOS
" I have a letter written by one long since dead, who had at least powers of description of no common order, telling how, when he tried to go out of his house upon the east coast, he could not find the trees on his own lawn save by feeling for their stems. He stood amazed not only in utter darkness, but in utter silence ; for the trade-wind had fallen dead, the everlasting roar of the surf was gone, and the only noise was the crashing of branches, snapped by the weight of the clammy dust. He went in again, and waited. About one o'clock the veil began to lift ; a lurid sunlight stared in from the horizon, but all was black overhead. Gradually the dust drifted away; the island saw the sun once more, and saw itself inches deep in black, and in this case fertilizing, dust. The trade- wind blew suddenly once more out of the clear east, and the surf roared again along the shore.
" Meanwhile a heavy earthquake-wave had struck part at least of the shores of Barbados. The ofentleman on the east coast, ^o- ing out, found traces of the sea, and boats and logs washed up some
ST. VINCENT AND MONT SOUFRIERE 115
ten to twenty feet above high-tide mark ; a convulsion which seemed to have gone unmarked during the general dismay.
"One man at least, an old friend of John Hunter, Sir Joseph Banks and others their compeers, was above the dismay, and the superstitious panic which accompanied it. Finding it still dark when he rose to dress, he opened (so the story used to run) his window ; found it stick, and felt upon the sill a coat of soft powder. 'The volcano in St. Vincent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, ' and this is the dust of it.' So he quieted his household and his negroes, lighted his candles, and went to his scientific books, in that delight, mingled with an awe not the less deep, because it is rational and self-possessed, with which he, like the other men of science, looked at the wonders of this wondrous world."
CHAPTER VII.
The Desolation of St. Vincent.
WHILE the great catastrophe which occurred on the Island of Martinique will be known from the name and horrors of St. Pierre or Mt. Pelee, yet the Island of St. Vincent also passed through a veritable baptism of fire, and the results were only less terrible than those that followed the eruption of Mont Pelee, destroying the town of St. Pierre and its environs with their 30,000 inhabitants.
Mont Soufriere broke into activity simultaneously with Mont Pelee and many of the people were destroyed. A line drawn from Cha- teau Belaire to Geororetown would divide the Island of St. Vincent into halves. Few human beings remained alive north of it. Many bodies were recovered, and it is known that many hundreds lay buried under the ashes that fell over the whole island.
It is estimated that nearly 2000 were sacrificed by the eruption. This includes most of the Carib Indians, which means the practical extinction of the race that was found on the island by Columbus four centuries ago. An old Indian prophecy that the Caribs would be sacrificed to the fire god, which they worshipped, has thus been fulfilled. Of the Caribs a small number remain on the Islands of St. Lucia and Dominica.
From St. Lucia the eruption of Mont Soufriere was visible
during the night of May 7. The following night the steamship
Wear, of the Royal Mail service, attempting to force her way to 116
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT
117
Kingstown, ran into a floating bank of ashes. For three hours the ship was practically helpless in a cloud of smoke and sulphurous ofas denser than that which floated down from Mont Pelee.
When Kingstown was finally reached at daybreak, it was found panic stricken. The streets were covered two inches deep with ashes and stones that had fallen durincr the nip-ht. Kincrstown is
fifteen miles from the crater which ejected the stones, yet the rain of missiles was almost incessant for three days. From Chateau Belaire word came that the distress there was Cfreat. A call had been sent for a clergyman, and one was taken up by the Wear. Down the sides of Mont Soufriere were flowing hundreds of streams of lava, which, uniting and separating, formed a net- work from which there was no possible escape for any living thing caught within its grasp.
THE LAVA STREAMS
By the explosion of 181 2 a river that had existed ever since the discovery of the island was dried up. Down Its channel for days after the eruption there flowed a swift stream of molten lava, which glistened like liquid silver, and which flowed into the sea within 100 yards of George- town. As the water and the lava met, a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing could be heard for miles.
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lis THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT
From a distance dozens of craters could be seen, now opening and again closing, near the crest of Mont Soufriere. The force of the eruption seemed to be lessened, but the danger continued still great. Many searching parties were immediately sent out. Seven estates were found to be ruined beyond hope of repair. Two chapels were buried under a stream of lava. Many houses were covered under masses of ashes and lava, and there was hardly a spot in the island that was not under from two inches to ten feet of ashes.
The British steamer Cennet on Sunday ran through five miles of smoke that was so dense that the crew were almost suffocated. F'or more than an hour the ship had to be left to its own guidance. Mont Soufriere, though not so active as it was immediately after the first eruption, was still so threatening as to terrify the inhabitants. Smoke and flames continued to belch from the crater, over which there was an incessant play of lightning, forking out from the column, that reached so far up into the sky that the eye could not perceive its crest.
It was more than two weeks previous to May lo, that Mont Soufriere first gave warning that it was about to give a display of fire-works as majestic as had been seen by man during the last thousand years. Mont Soufriere can be seen fully fifty miles at sea on a clear day. For ninety years the old volcano had been somnolent. On rare occasions it had grumbled internally, but it had been regarded as harmless by the Indians, who told of the eruptions which ceased long ago, and which they had carried in their traditions. After the eruption of 1812 the old crater closed, and water, filling it, formed a beautiful blue lake.
For many days preceeding the eruption Soufriere labored inwardly in a manner such as was new to the present generation.
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT 119
Then, on May 5, the crater lake became greatly disturbed. It began to boil and bubble like a great cauldron. Steam arose from it in immense clouds. The rumblinof beneath the mountain redoubled in force, and at 2 o'clock that afternoon Soufriere trembled as though it was in the throes of a terrible agony. Then came a series of severe earthquakes that shook the entire island.
DESCRIPTION OF THE OUTBREAK OF MAY 7, I902.
That night sulphuric flames played about the summit of the volcano, giving it a weird and terrible appearance. Steam contin- ued to rise in clouds, and the thunders of the skies were joined with those that came from the bowels of the Soufriere. t\W. dur- ing Wednesday the splendid phenomenon continued, giving those who lived in the near vicinity of the volcano ample time to make their escape. All seem to have been hypnotized, and of the num- bers who were there only a few hundred went away.
It was noon on Wednesday, May 7, 1902, that Mont Sou- friere suddenly opened, sending six separate streams of lava pour- ing and boiling down its sides. Death was everywhere, and in its most terrible forms. Lightning came from the sky, killing many who had escaped the molten streams that poured into the valleys.
For this great tragedy the settings were wonderful. Soufriere literally rocked in its agony. From its summit a majestic column of smoke, inky black, reached skyward. The crraters were vomit- ing incandescent matter that gave forth prismatic lights as it rolled away toward the sea. Great waves of fire seemed to hedge about the mountain top. Such thunder as has seldom been heard by man cracked and rolled through the heavens. From the earth came tre- mendous detonations. These joined with the thunder, all merging in an incessant roar that added to the panic of fleeing inhabitants.
120 THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT
This lasted through the night, and the day and night follow- ing. On Thursday morning a huge column, so black that it had the appearance of ebony, arose to an estimated height of eight miles from the top of the volcano.
Ashes and rock, as well as lava, were carried skyward in this column to deluge the island and the ocean for miles around. Grad- ually the column mushroomed at the top and spread out into dense clouds, that descended to bring night at noontime. The atmos- phere was so laden with sulphurous gas that life was made almost impossible. Hundreds of those nearest to Soufriere were suffocated by this gas before they were touched by the burning lava.
A TERRIBLE NIGHT
Many expected that the entire island would be destroyed, and the night of Thursday was given up to prayers. All that night the darkness v/as beyond description, save when everything was made light as broad day by the lightning which forked out from the volcano. The earth quaked incessantly, the mountains shook, stones, lava and great quantities of ashes never ceased to fall. So terrible were the thunders that it seemed to the terrified that the universe was being rent to pieces and that the last day had come.
Friday brought a slight respite. Soufriere became less agi- tated. The lava streams did not decrease, but the showers of rocks stopped for a time. Then those of stout heart ventured out to take stock of the wonderful ruin that had been wrougfht.
All areas of cultivation were found to be destroyed, buried under banks of volcanic matter. Wallibou and Richmond planta- tions and villafies on the leeward coast were wrecked. Wallibou was partly under water, which had been swept in from the sea by a
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT 121
tidal wave. Five other plantations were gone and every vestige of human life had vanished.
The Carib Indians had made that portion of the island lying at the base of Soufriere their country. That entire district was a smoking, incinerated ruin. Ashes were everywhere, being in no place less than two feet deep, and in some places lava had rolled over the deep banks of ashes. Every Indian seemed to have disap- peared, there being no survivors known until some time afterward. All vegetation was destroyed. Not a sprig of green was to be seen on the island. Live stock had died. Houses had vanished from their sites. Rivers were dry and their beds ran lava.
ON EVERY HAND COMPLETE DESOLATION
\
Everywhere north of Chateau Belaire were dead bodies, some half buried, others showing that they had been stricken down by the lightning. A few seemed to have been dipped in lava, which took form from them. Decomposition seemed to be almost im- mediate. The dead were buried or burned as rapidly as possible, but the conditions were such that pestilence could hardly be averted.
Kingstown was safe, but Georgetown suffered terribly. In the hospitals there hundreds of sufferers were being cared for, with lit- tle chance that any of them would recover. There followed a peril of famine. Had not supplies been quickly received, hundreds would have starved. When the violent eruption had ceased, the air was filled with volcanic dust and ashes, creating an intense thirst and such suffering as can hardly be imagined by those not on the island.
The steamer Wear, sent by government officials from St. Lucia on the evening of the 8th, to visit the island, reported that terrible flames were visible during the entire journey. At midnight it was seen that a volcano was in eruption, about four miles away.
122 THE DESOLATION OE ST. VINCENT
The Wear ran into heavy showers of gray ashes, and the peo- ple on board were almost suffocated. The atmosphere was so dense that nothing- could be seen. The steamer put about and steamed to the south for two hours before she was clear of the showers of ashes. At three o'clock in the morning she put back toward the island and encountered more ashes and was again com- pelled to put off. She arrived at Kingstown at about five o'clock on the morning of the 9th.
It was then seen that the volcano was in constant eruption, and there was a tremendous roar. Forked lightning played incessantly over the disturbed section, the flashes averaging from sixty to one hundred a minute. Kingstown, which is twelve miles from the volcano, had been covered with three inches of ashes and showers of stones on Thursday, and the glow from the eruption was visible forty miles away.
The terrific force of the eruption may be illustrated by one incident. Ashes in great quantity fell on the deck of the British steamship Coya, Captain Eton, when she was 250 miles distant from the island.
RIVERS OF LAVA.
When the Wear was opposite Belaire there was a grand view of the west side of the crater. Rivers of lava were coming down the mountain sides in every direction and flowing into the sea. The huge crater was covered with smoke, and there was an inces- sant eruption. Great quantities of ashes were blown into the air and were fallinor toward the sea, A new lane was observed runningr
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out toward the sea for half a mile. It was of a brownish color, and was probably lava which had been cooled by the sea water. It was impossible to get close to the town.
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT 123
The sea was littered with trees and other wreckage. An attempt was made to proceed to St. Lucia through the falHng ashes, but it was found impossible. It meant suffocation to try it. A run out- ward was made, but the vessel entered the belt miles out at sea, with the same result. On the horizon there was nothing to be seen but falling ashes and other material, which was piled up like an enormous wall. Inside the belt all was dark.
Putting back, the Wear steamed around the island to the wind- ward. Opposite Georgetown she encountered a gale of wind car- rying smoke and debris. To the north the entire territory of the disturbed district was clearly visible. Besides the large crater, numerous small craters were in eruption, and many streams of lava v/ere flowing seaward, one of them half a mile wide.
On the 13th it was reported from Castries, St. Lucia, that the volcano was still in destructive eruption. A terrific cannonade seemed to be going on a hundred miles away. The reports were followed by columns of smoke, rising miles in the air. Immense balls of colored fire also issued from the crater. Lightning played fiercely in the upper sky, and the whole northern part of the island was one mass of spreading flame. It was impossible to reach the burning district by land or sea, and there were no means of estima- ting the destruction wrought to life and property. Kingstown was safe, though showers of ashes and pebbles continually fell on the town. The volcano itself was invisible.
EFFECTS OF THE ERUTTION
No person at that time was able to approach within eight miles of the new crater of the Soufriere volcano, but, judging from what could be seen from a considerable distance, the old lake at the summit of the mountain had disappeared. The numerous fissures
124 THE DESOLATION OF ST VINCENT
in the mountain side continued to throw out vapor, and the subter- ranean murmurings and tremblings indicated continued unrest. During the afternoon of Monday a dense volume of steam and smoke rose from the volcano and the whole island was covered by a peculiar mist, while the inhalation of noxious vapors made breathing very difficult and added to the distress of the people.
Physical changes resulted from the eruptions, including several fissures on La Soufriere and an inlet of the sea where the estate of Walibou had been. Richmond, an estate adjacent to Walibou, which was formerly flat, and upon which there were several labor- ers' cottages, had been completely burned, and out of the estate there had arisen a laree ridofe of ground. A ravine a hundred feet deep, the source of the Rabacca or Dry River, was filled level with lava. This river bed had been dry since the eruption of 1812, and will perhaps be dry forever.
The estimate of deaths had gradually grown from a few hun- dred to 1600 by the 12th, this being the estimate sent to Secretary Hay by our special correspondent on the island of Barbados, General A. S. MacAUister, United States Consul at that island. The followino- is the text of his cable messaoe : — "Sixteen hundred deaths at St. Vincent ; four thousand destitute. Immediate wants supplied. Aid needed for six months. This authentic."
As the days went by still more dead bodies were discovered. Of these 400 remained unburied. But that was the least of the trouble. Thus far no effort had been made to do more than care for the living and bury the dead. All about were dead cattle, pol- luting the atmosphere, which already was heavily laden with disease. In one of the ravines near Morne Garou the bodies of eigty-seven Carib Indians were found heaped together. Not far away were the carcasses of hundreds of cattle.
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT 125
It was later ordered that these menaces to Hf e should be removed, quicklime being used to destroy the bodies. Fires were kindled over the district which was laid waste by Soufriere, and in these were thrust the carcasses of the dead cattle.
A correspondent's statement
On May 15 a press correspondent returned from a visit, on horseback, to the devastated district of the island, through which he made a journey of fifty miles, and penetrated to within five miles of the crater. The followinor was the result of his observations : —
" The entire northern part of the island is covered with ashes to an average depth of eighteen inches, varying from a thin layer at Kingstown to two feet or more at Georgetown. The crops are ruined, nothing green can be seen, the streets of Georgetown are cumbered with snowdrift-like heaps of ashes, and ashes rest so heavily on the roofs that in several cases they have caused them to fall in. There will soon be 5,000 destitute persons in need of assis- tance from the government, which is already doing everything possible to relieve the sufferers. There are a hundred injured people in the hospital at Georgetown, gangs of men are searching for the dead or rapidly burying them in trenches, and all that can be done under the circumstances is being accomplished.
" The arrival here of the first detachment of the Ambulance Corps, which brought sufferers from Georgetown, caused a sensa- tion. This batch consisted of a hundred persons, whose charred bodies exhaled fetid odors, and whose loathsome faces made even the hospital attendants shudder. All these burned persons were suffering fearfully from thirst and uttering, when strong enough to do so, agonizing cries for water. It is doubtful whether any of the whole party will recover.
126 THE DESOLATION OF ST VINCENT
" While the outbreak of the volcano on the island of Martin- ique killed more people outright, more territory has been ruined in St. Vincent, hence there is greater destitution here. The injured persons were horribly burned by the hot grit, which was driven along with tremendous velocity. Twenty-six persons who sought refuge in a room ten feet by twelve were all killed. One person was brained by a huge stone nine miles from the crater.
BURIAL AND TARE OF VICTIMS
" Roueh coffins are beinof made to receive the bodies of the victims. The hospital here is filled with dying people. Fifty in- jured persons are lying on the floor of that building, as there are no beds for their accommodation, though cots are being rapidly constructed of boards. This and similar work has been going on since immediately after the disaster, but two days elapsed before there were any burials, as the negroes refused to dig the necessary trenches, though they were offered three times their usual wages by the local authorities. The nurses employed are incompetent, but they are willing to learn, and are working hard. The negroes are indifferent to all that has taken place. They expect to receive government rations. There have been instances where they have refused to bury their own relatives.
"Since midnight on Tuesday the subterranean detonations here have ceased, and the Soufriere on Wednesday relapsed, ap- parently, into perfect repose, no smoke rising from the crater, and the fissures emitting no vapor. The stunted vegetation that for- merly adorned the slopes of the mountain has disappeared, having given place to gray-colored lava, which greets the eye on every side. The atmosphere is dry. Rain would be welcome, as there is a great deal of dust in the air, which is disagreeable and irritating
THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT 127
to the throats and eyes, and is causing the merchants to put all their drygoods under cover. The white inhabitants are anxious to know whether the repose of the volcano is permanent, or whether it is the lull which usually precedes greater activity. Some people, anticipating that there is danger of further volcanic eruptions, are leaving the outlying towns for this city. The negroes who have remained on the estates are half-starved, and the few Carib survivors are lea^ving their caves and pillaging abandoned dwelling houses and shops. A number of arrests have been made in this con- nection.
ASPECT OF THE VOLCANO
" The report that the volcanic lake which occupied the top of the mountain has disappeared appears to be confirmed. A sea of lava, emitting sulphurous fumes, now apparently occupies the place, and several new craters have been formed. The last time the volcano showed activity, on Tuesday last, the craters, old and new, and numerous fissures in the mountain sides discharged hot vapor, deep subterranean murmurings were heard, the ground trembled at times, from the centre of the volcano huge volumes of steam rose like gigantic pine trees toward the sky, and a dense black smoke, minelincr with the steam, issued from a new and active crater, form- ing an immense pall over the northern hills, lowering into the val- leys and then rising and spreading until it enveloped the whole island in a peculiar gray mist. Simultaneous action upon the part of the volcanoes of Martinique and St. Vincent seems to denote a volcanic connection between these islands, and appears to verify the assumption of the volcanic origin of the mountain chains run- ning parallel with the Soufriere in the Windward districts,
"The sulphurous vapors, which still exhale all over the island, are increasing the sickness and mortality among the surviving
128 THE DESOLATION OF ST. VINCENT
inhabitants, and are causing suffering among the new arrivals. The hospital staffs are giving way to overwork, and are with difficulty bearing up, but the news of the dispatch of an ambulance corps from the garrison at Barbados and the statements made that fur- ther medical assistance will arrive here shortly are having a benefi- cial effect upon all concerned.
" The stench in the affflcted districts is terrible beyond descrip- tion. Nearly all the huts left standing are filled with dead bodies. In some cases disinfectants and the usual means of disposing of the dead are useless, and cremation has been resorted to. When it is possible the bodies are dragged with ropes to the trenches and are there hastily covered up, quicklime being used when available. Many of the dead bodies were so covered with dust that they were not discovered until walked upon by visitors, or by the relieving officers or their assistants. The scenes witnessed were unprece- dented in the history of this colony.
" Much importance is attached locally to the loss which the colony has sustained in the injury to the peasant proprietary, a scheme for whose development was lately started by the imperial government, with a view to assist the inhabitants and in order to encourage the people to attain prosperity."
A LATER STATEMENT
A later statement from Kingstown gave additional informa- tion, as follows :
" Were it possible <