The world on fire, including splendors and horrors of the volcanic eruptions of the Lesser Antilles

Front matter

JOSEPHINE, EMPRESS OF FRANCE.

MURAT HALSTEAD, THE AUTHOR.

The World on Fire

Prologue

The experience of our race teaches that we live in a wonderful, beautiful, beneficent and terrible world. It is a rolling splendor, and so far as our kind are competent to comprehend it, an eternal mystery. Ages on ages have unfolded the books of nature and the glories of God, but riding upon our stately home through the universe, and measuring our flight by far off -brilliants, that we find for our purposes "fixed stars" and confidently call them so, we perceive they are steadfast only in their relations to us, for the processions of which we behold the pageantry pursue sightless oaths beyond the spheres of the marvels that are masterful, in our guidance. When we study the systems for which thousands of years are as a vapor, that goes as light comes, and are convinced that our majestical planet is an atom, stupendous as it has been revealed to us; and the all-conquering and compelling sun a moon following the wheeling of other vaster suns; and these having infinitely greater suns to lead them.

This earth of ours has been called "the great globe we inherit." We have been assured eye-witnesses that we dwell upon an orb that is as a bubble on a flood that streams through the unknown, giving and receiving light, and subject to magnetic influences, all-abounding and controlling. The profoundest students are persuaded, as they strive for knowledge, that their lives illustrate the fabulous truth that the philosopher announced when he said at the end of his labors of discovery, he had only picked up a few pebbles on the shore of an illimitable sea of knowledge.

Our portion of the revelation of the spectacular dwelling places of

our people tells at first that we may not boast independence, for the sov-

**-

8 PROLOGUE

ereign sun is clearly our master, the fountain of living light, of the heat that is creative force, and that we may well believe is subordinate to greater powers. Our tremendous earth, of which we are so profoundly conscious, with its wealth of continents and oceans, is of a group of glorious worlds, and these greater and smaller than our inheritance, while the steady blazing suns have their families of planets, and the planets satellites, some with many moons, while we, spinning in the midst, bear with us a lifeless and lonesome moon, as we know life and comprehend companionship.- As we are able to group the issues of life and death, the moon is a dead child of the luminous system, a thing of beauty, not a joy forever, but pale and cold, contrasted with the pn> digious flaming furnaces of the suns, attracting exhaustless streams of fuel from the regions the comets visit and convey to the consuming stars resources of vitality. Between the sun and moon, we seem to partake of the nature of both. We are not quick as the sun, or dead as the moon. We are of the stars that are glowing factors and differ in glory. The sun is fire for the day. The moon is a lamp to> make the shadows of night fainter, and soften dazzling fires. The grandeur of the earth is manifest. It is our house and home made with infinite hands. Our race has but touched the surface of its store of energy, and had visions of its bounty. It has an atmosphere of storms, and a bosom of flame; but the land and the waters abound with our food. The inner fires of the sun are radiated, and we follow the splendid leader, as the fair phantom moon follows us. Near as our pallid attendant is to> us, we are not sure whether she is quite calm, but we believe she is cold, and hardly know why she haunts us, but sure we could not spare her gentle rule of the night, misty with stars. The sun is a flame. His fires are visible, tor they are the light, and we feel them, for they are of the principle of life. Our earth partakes of the character of sun and moon. Perhaps we once had a work of preparation to accomplish before we could take our spin with the other worlds, and that it was fitted up for man by evolutions, for which in the eternity of the past there was ample time for

PROLOGUE 9

soil to accumulate, and food grains and fruit trees to grow, bloom in the spring and ripen in the summer.

The mountains that burn and the storms that rend are signs of the life of our planet. The procession of the seasons turn the tides, according to the constellations that are the universal clocks. The earthquake is a process of progress, science says, and it is written over the face of the earth that there has been shifting of seas and changes of climates, that continents and oceans have shifted places, and the shaking of the ground and the bursting of fires from the deeper deeps, preparing resources for the generations that are to gather the harvests of the Hereafter, richer than golden. The volcanic conditions are not confined to certain lands, but common to all engaged in the wonders yet to be wrought. As the ages go, the fashioning of instruments of investigation of the hitherto unsearchable secrets of the earth permit deeper explorations, and now the earth is to be proved as the air is to be navigated, and the secrets of the fires that boil the waters under the earth added to our education.

The Atlantic Ocean in the tropics is separated frDm the greater islands of the American Mediterranean — the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico' — by a chain of smaller groups, of almost incomparable beauty, belonging to Denmark, France and England. They are lofty in their loveliness, like Hayti, and among their attractions have been rugged peaks blackened with ancient fires, whose reputation has been less formidable in the stirring latter years than formerly. Like Vesuvius they have, after long rests, suddenly burst forth with tremendous thunderings, and exploded as if infinite stores of dynamite had been ignited. Floods of scalding mud, rivers of lava, rains of ashes darkening land and sea, hail storms of fiery rocks instead of pellets of ice, clouds of swooping flame, cyclones of deadly gases, have annihilated cities and killed of people unnumbered thousands. Here is the most frightful and startling event in the records of the earth.

Two mountains especially have contributed this amazing disaster,

10 PROLOGUE

that adds grandeur of sorrow to teachings of wisdom, and it has not a little affected the confidence of the nations in the immortality, under obvious conditions, of the great globe itself.

The marvelous energies of Krakatoa, whose thunders were heard across Indian Ocean, and twenty-five hundred miles away, while the lurid vapor discharged reddened the skies for months, as the. mighty waters rolled, have been surpassed in the islands of the Caribs.

Volcanoes are steam holes. The power exerted in eruptions is steam power, unless there is some monstrous magnetism that cannot be measured or named. The tops of live mountains have been blown away with astounding desolation. It does not seem impossible that if the dreadful peaks of Martinique and St. Vincent had been set off at once, their united potentiality might have rent the crust of the earth over the abyss of inconceivable heat, of which both serve as valves of escaping gases from the bottomless pits, and turned the ocean into the inconceivable burning core of the earth, sent our world flying with the other broken worlds, all our beauty at an end, so far as the conditions go that sustain human life, and find hope in other stars. Do we totter upon the verge of possible problems that involve the earth as a habitation of man ? Science had just pronounced the muttering mountain, that was the background of the pleasant City of St. Pierre, safe, and the scientists, having at hand means of flight, escaped with their lives, and our war ships sent on errands of charity fled before the lightnings and thunders of Mont Pelee, whose rain of fire and brimstone, glowing rocks and scalding waters, and blazing clouds were made an intolerable assault on land and sea, all swallowed in a whirlpool of scorching and blasting chariots of clouds afire. Murat Halstead.

Contents

PAGE

Prologue . 7" 10

List of Illustrations 16-18

Chapter I. Introductory

A General Survey of the Subjects Treated — The Volcanoes That Are Famous and the Eruptions That Are Historical — Sidelights That Are of Interest in the General Illumination 19-25

Chapter II

THE TRAGEDY OF ST. PIERRE.

Detail of the Sudden Stroke of the Black Cloud Charged With Deadly Gas and Devouring Fire — The Sudden Death of a Great Multitude — The Woeful Tales of the Suffering, Near Unto Death, of Survivors — The Good Service of Soldiers 26-46

Chapter III. Destruction By Pelee's Rain Of Fire

Comparative Figures of Other Great Disasters — Supposition of a Scientist — The Facts About the Disaster in Martinique as Gleaned from Later and Corroborated Reports 47-65

Chapter IV. An Awful Outbreak Of Pelee

The Top of the Mountain Blown Off — A Rain of Scalding Mud — Flood of Lava and Cyclone of Fire — On Horror's Head Honors Accumulate 66-81

Chapter V. Frightful Pranks Of Mont Pelee

Inhabitants of St. Pierre Warned by Minor Eruptions Several Days Before the Destruction of the Town — Evidence in Letters Written Before the Eruption —

A Series of Eruptions Followed the Great Upheaval .82-88

12 CONTENTS

Chapter VI. The Name Of The Terrible Mountain

PAGE

Detail of the Horrors of the Ruined City — Fatal Conservatism of the Governor of Martinique — Report of the Adventurous Scientific Exploration of Mont Pelee, and the Daring Journey to the Crater of George Kennan, the Historian and Correspondent < 89-105

v CHAPTER VII.

WORLD-WIDE CHARITIES.

The United States Led the Way in Official Action — Public Subscription and the Dispatch of Relief Ships — President Roosevelt Was First and Emperor William a Good Second 106-116

Chapter XIII. Martinique In Its Beauty

PAGE

Gay and Brilliant Under the Gloomy Mountain — Pen Pictures of the Scenery — The Story of the Empress Josephine — The Terrors of the Fer de Lance, More Deadly Than the Cobra — An Earthquake Scare 213-229

Chapter XIV. The Ancient History Of The Caribs And Their Islands

How the Latter Are Associated With the Wars That Lasted Two Centuries Between the English, French and Spaniards — Their Association with Columbus — A Theory That in the Pearl Islands the Word "Americapan" Was in Us?, and That From It Was Evolved the Name of the New World, America. . . .230-238

Chapter XV. The Isle Of Nevis

One of the String of the Caribbee Pearls — Alexander Hamilton's Birthplace, and Scene of the Episode of Marriage in Lord Nelson's Life — The Story of Nelson's Career as a Lover in the West Indies 239-250

Chapter XVI. Destiny Decided Off The Caribbees

The English Revenge for Yorktown — Admiral Grasse Left Fort de France as the Hurricane Season Was Coming On, and Effectively Co-operated with Washington and Rochambeau to Capture Cornwallis — The Fleets of the English and French Were in Full Force in Carib Waters the Next Spring, and in the Great Battle Grasse W T as Beaten and Captured for the Luck of Fortune Was Against Him 251-261

Chapter XXIV. The Phenomena Of Vesuvius

The Most Famous of Fiery Mountains — Remarkable in Its Eruptions — Memorably Historic in Its Surroundings — The Story of This Mountain as Related by the Most Daring, Studious, Intelligent and Constant of Its Observers 336-370

CONTENTS 15

Chapter XXV. The Caribbees And The Isthmian Canals

PAGE

Still the Road Around the World Is That Which Columbus Sought — The Trade Winds Carried Him on Broad Tropical Lines of Circumnavigation — There Are No More Continents to Find, But There Is An Isthmus to Cut to Find the Broad Way, and the Caribbees Guard the Gate of the Central Seas 371-382

Chapter XXVI. The Darien Isthmian Canal History

The Material Question Not the Route, But the Achievement — Supreme Advantages It Would Give the United States — It Would Unite the Oceans — Salient Points of a Historical Discussion — The Time to Act Is "Now 383-3S6

Chapter XXVII. The Isthmian Canal Question

The Competition Between the Panama and Nicaragua Routes — Their Comparative Length and Situation — The Splendid Story of the Suez Canal — All the Nations of the Earth Want the American Isthmian Canal 387-406

Chapter XXVIII. World's Wonder Work

Steel Roads to Bind All the Continents — Steamers Belt Around the Earth in the Tropics, Through Two Isthmian Canals and Mediterranean Seas — Isles of the Caribs' Relation to Canals — The Path of Commercial Progress That of the Trade Winds Following the War Flags 407-419

Chapter XXIX. Volcanoes Of The World

The Lines of Fire Loopholes That Belt the Globe — Observations by Leading Scientists — Chemical Action in Volcanic Eruptions — An Interesting Story Written in Science 420-450

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. Josephine, Empress of France.

2. Murat Halstead, the Author.

3. Statue of Empress Josephine in Fort de France.

4. Statue of Empress Josephine, Another View.

5. Birthplace of Empress Josephine, in Martinique.

6. Sugar House in Martinique — Early Home of Josephine.

7. Napoleon Crowning Josephine Empress of France.

8. Mont Pelee in Eruption.

9. St. Pierre Overwhelmed by Mont Pelee's Eruption.

10. Eruption of Mont Pelee.

11. St. Pierre Seen from the Harbor.

12. Signal Tower at St. Pierre.

13. The River at St. Pierre before the Eruption.

14. An Old Stairway in St. Pierre.

15. Street Scene in St. Pierre.

16. Map of the Windward Islands.

17. View of St. Pierre before the Eruption.

18. St. Pierre Seen from the Roadstead.

19. Street Car in St. Pierre.

20. Handling Tobacco in St. Pierre.

21. View of City Hall, St. Pierre.

22. Victor Hugo Street, St. Pierre.

23. St. Pierre Seen from the Harbor.

24. The Market in St. Pierre.

25. The Theatre in St. Pierre.

26. Street Scene in St. Pierre.

27. A Road in the Suburbs of St. Pierre.

28. A French Creole of St. Pierre.

29. A Martinique Belle.

30. Mont Pelee, May 12, 1902.

31. Ruins of St. Pierre Along the Shore.

32. Ruins of St. Pierre as Seen from the Sea.

33. Wrecked Cathedral of St. Pierre.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IT

34. Refugees from St. Pierre.

35. American Marines in St. Pierre, after Eruption.

36. Bodies of Mother and Child Found after Eruption. 2,7. Skull Found in St. Pierre after the Eruption.

38. Louis H. Ayme, U. S. Consul at Guadeloupe.

39. Native Divers in St. Pierre's Harbor.

40. Ruins of Pompeii.

41. City of Naples, Italy.

42. The Volcano Vesuvius in Italy.

43. Waianae Coffee Nursery in Hawaiian Islands.

44. Famous Walk in Royal Palms, Honolulu.

45. Nuuanu Valley Pass and Pali Peak, near Honolulu.

46. Travelers' Tree, Hawaii.

47. Banana Plant, Hawaii.

48. Entrance to Queen's Hospital, Honolulu.

49. Flume for Conveying Water in Hawaii.

50. Lava Formation at Kilauea Crater, Hawaii.

51. Pineapple Ranch in Hawaii.

52. Flume Used to Convey Water to Hawaiian Sugar Mills.

53. Surf Boat Used by Hawaiians.

54. Panama Canal, 14 Miles from Atlantic.

55. Panama Canal, Cut at San Pablo.

56. Panama Canal, Culebra Cut.

57. Panama Canal, 32 Miles from Atlantic.

58. La Boca Pier at Beginning of Panama Canal.

59. Panama Canal, Great Culebra Cut.

60. Panama Canal, Pier at La Boca.

61. Panama Canal, 32 Miles from Atlantic.

62. Panama Canal, Culebra Cut.

65. Panama Canal, End of the Culebra Cut.

69. Theatre at San Jose, Costa Rica.

70. School House in San Jose, Costa Rica.

71. View on San Juan River, Costa Rica.

72. Pier at Greytown, Nicaragua.

73. Banana Train in Costa Rica.

y

18 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

74. Birdseye View of Lake Managua, Nicaragua.

75. Landing at Lake Managua, Nicaragua.

j6. Coffee-Curing Establishment at San Jose, Costa Rica.

yy. Native House in Masaya, Nicaragua.

78. Barber Shop in Masaya, Nicaragua. »

79. Coffee-Curing Establishment of San Jose, Costa Rica.

80. Banana Depot Near Blue Fields, Nicaragua.

81. Monument at San Jose, Costa Rica.

82. Steamship Passing Through Suez Canal.

83. Harbor at Port Said. Entrance to Suez Canal.

84. Views Along the Suez Canal.

85. Map of Natural Waterways of the Globe.

The World on Fire

Chapter I. Introductory

A General Survey of the Subjects Treated — The Volcanoes That Are Famous and the Eruptions That Are Historical — Sidelights That Are of Interest in the General Illumination.

In the prehistoric ages there may have been earthquakes and eruptions of volcanoes greater than we have in the records. Geology tells that there were periods when evolutions of the earth as it was were more revolutionary than in the times that are shadowed forth in the traditions. The deeper students of old times tell us that there are beds of lava very far down in the stratification, just as the more recent foundations of the city bear marks of a great fire, of which witnesses still live and are engaged in good works. The portion of the earth that bears the slightest traces in history of internal forces, fires and tremors, is the continent of Africa, but it does not prove that the bursting forth of fiery mountains and the subsoiling of the substance of the earth, when its crust is fractured by fissures formed by internal forces, are unknown in the dark continent.

Perhaps the fundamental fact in earthquakes is that they require a combination of fire and water. The greater quakes have been located on islands and peninsulas. The cities by the seas are those that have suffered most from the paroxysms of the earth. The remarkable case of Lisbon comes first in magnitude of disasters. We have a recent example in our own country, in the city of Charleston. Iceland is entirely volcanic, and the eruption of the Scapta is quoted as that in which there was more matter exploded to the earth's surface than in any other case of volcanic eruption. Mount Hecla has a record carefully kept of the eruptions of a thousand years, during which it has been in tremendous agitation more than a hundred times. Hecla at peace is a beautiful mass of whiteness, formed like a hen's egg, lying on its side, and seen at a distance a few precipices look like pencilmarks on the snow. The eruptions of Hecla have been extremely unfortunate for and fatal to the Icelandic people because they live largely on milk and fish, and the deadly volcano's immense clouds are of dust that blights the grass and poisons cattle, while the fish are destroyed in some of the rivers by streams of lava very alarming, and are frightened from the shaky shores.

The capital village of Iceland is Reykjavik — the "Smoking Bay." There is a cape that is the "Smoking Nose," and throughout the island there are hot springs, the greater of which are the famous geysers; these, doubtless, the evidence of volcanic action, suppressed for a time, perhaps restrained by the activities of Hecla, whose stupendous beauties are in full view from the geyser grounds across a broad and desolate but grassy valley. There is not in that silent, somber vale, a tree, or house, or sign of life, except in the flight of flocks of ravens. The sands of the seashores are black.

The great volcano of the world that seems to go on from everlasting to everlasting is in the Sandwich Islands, where a lofty and vast crater boils and rages forever, and such floods of lava are discharged from time to time that they force their way through forests that they consume, melting hills by the way, until they are quenched in the sea, wherein they have often tumbled in cataracts of fire, sending clouds of steam to the skies.

It is worthy of remark that the deepest water known, by measurement, in an ocean, is in the Pacific, some leagues east of the Hawaiian group. The greater volcanic eruptions, taking into account the area of

STATUE OF JOSEPHINE, Empress of France, in tbe Public Square in Fort de France, Martinique Erected by tbe People of tbe Island of Martinique.

land shaken, are those of the Lisbon earthquake, that of New Madrid, and Krakatoa. The seas are accustomed to be close at hand to furnish the water, to come in contact with the fire and raise the steam power that makes the world tremble. The Mississippi river was, however, equal to the water supply in 1812. The recollection of the New Madrid "quakes," that was handed down from the contemporary generation, related very often to the stoppage of the tall seven day clocks, that were apparently indispensable time-keepers, and the rattling of the rifles in the buckhorn racks, fixed to the wooden walls; also the extreme fright of horses and cattle. The sheep and hogs, the saying was, had not sense enough to be scared at anything they did not see.

The extraordinary energy and destructiveness of the volcanic eruptions in the Caribbean Islands have drawn to them the attention of the world in a degree never before experienced, and there is a historical surprise in the revelation of the number of personages of world-wide reputation and uncommon importance, and of events originating in that quarter that have had influence of fame in all parts of the world, and shaped events with the magic of tropical tempers, combined with tht tenacity of the blood of the zone that is the north temperate, and outlasts in effective strength the people of torrid lands.

First we find Christopher Columbus, fascinated by the beauty of the islands, profoundly interested in their people, at a loss for language to express his admiration ; and in one of the names that became familiar during his voyages, he was robbed of the honor so hardly won of giving his own name to his own discoveries, striking out Columbus and inserting American. The early European navigators and adventurers thought they found a paradise in each of the islands, and dreamed of marvelous wealth to be gathered, likened the Lesser Antilles to a string of pearls, and discovered on the Atlantic frontier, as it were, of the West Indies, the warlike Caribs, fierce fighters, and of a manlier and more strenuous type than the people of the Greater Antilles, who were a softer race, readily enslaved, and in their weakness speedily perished under the hardships imposed upon them. The Caribs were maneaters, and made a very stout and ferocious fight. They were wonderfully expert watermen, going about over seas exceptionally stormy, in canoes, and exceedingly skilled as voyagers.

It is one of the stated incidents of the recent desolation of the island of St. Vincent that the last of the Caribs perished in the lava streams, so that there is an end of all the races that Columbus found in the splendid archipelago that he dreamed were the Indies, of whom the Spaniards and Italians had heard in the Asiatic waters where the East and West were lost. With the exception of the Caribs, the original inhabitants of the West Indies were like a race of children, gentle and kindly, living upon the fruits that grew in the forests, and the fish that glittered in the rivers and along the seashores. Their houses were of the leaves of the palm. There were orange and cocoanut trees, so that refreshments were forever abundant, and the soil was rich. There was opulence of food in half a dozen varieties of sweet potatoes. The people were attractive, but were swept away utterly, and the demand for the labor that they could not supply was the African slave trade.

In presenting the surroundings of the volcanoes that recently have wrought such frightful destruction, we find in the Lesser Antilles the birthplace of the Empress Josephine of France, the wife of Napoleon, and the history of her youth in her native island of Martinique was a romance, before she saw her future Empire. There is no more interesting story in fiction than the history of Josephine, and the splendor of her elevation as the wife of Napoleon, crowned with his own hand as Empress of France, has caused neglect, almost forgetfulness, of her attractive childhood in the island now so awfully stricken and desolate.

Horatio, Lord Nelson, the greatest of the British Admirals, was married on the Isle of Nevis, which has also the distinction of being the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, one of the men of genius in the American revolution, one whose influential public life will be memorable through all time, and who before leaving his native island had indicated the astonishing precocity of his genius by writing a story of a hurricane that devastated his birthplace, while Nelson's glory outshines all the other heroes of the wars on the seas.

It was in the midst of these islands that the great naval battle was fought between the English Admiral Rodney and the French Admiral Grasse, a combat that decided the question of the mastery of the seas by the British as against the French. The forces of the combatants were nearly equal, and the run of luck was with the British.

Lord Nelson was in love several times in the West Indies, before he met the fascinating widow who was one of his fates. He and Rodney, who stands next as the great Admiral most potent for England, were in a constant contention while in the Indies, with their home governments and distinguished subordinate officers. They were of high warlike spirit, but Nelson had the happy fortune of being personally companionable.

The story of Nelson's marriage has seldom been fully related, as given in the history of the Lesser Antilles, and the light on his future career, as a genius for sea fights and undisciplined in domestic affairs, is clear and convincing. He respected his wife, but he loved Lady Hamilton, and made eagerly boundless sacrifices for her sake. The only relationship between Alexander Hamilton and Lord Nelson was that the former was born and the latter married on the little isle Nevis, one of the lesser pearls of the Lesser Antilles. »

The story of Josephine in Martinique is a true fairy tale. In the light of burning mountains of the Caribbees, the figures that loom in the history of "the Pearls'' are a group in which the world is vividly interested.

CHAPTER 11,

THE TRAGEDY OF ST. PIERRE.

Detail of the Sudden Stroke of the Black Cloud Charged with Deadly Gas and Devouring Fire- — The Sudden Death of a Great Multitude — The Woeful Tales of the Suffering, Near unto Death, of Survivors — The Good Service of Soldiers.

The inhabitants of St. Pierre had been accustomed to count among the chances of their lives, witnessing an actual volcanic eruption. Such a calamity was dreaded, but there was felt to be something in the nature of compensation, if there must be a stupendous show, in making the most of the spectacular effects of the occasion. Clara King was the nurse of the Stokes children on the fated British steamer, the Roraima, and was in her stateroom, the vessel at rest in the harbor, when the steward called to her, "Look at Mont Pelee." She hastened to the deck, and saw a vast black cloud coming down from the volcano. The steward ordered her to return to the saloon, saying, "It is coming."

Miss King then ran to the saloon. She says she experienced a feeling of suffocation, which was followed by intense heat.

The after part of the Roraima broke out in flames. "Ben" Benson, the carpenter of the Roraima, who is now in hospital here 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 little Margaret were placed.

While the raft was being constructed Margaret's little brother died. Mate Scott took water to the child 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.

All who saw the black cloud and lived, speak of it with awe and wonder, and of the deathly airs that came from the volcano and were charged with horrible gases from the inner world, for which there is no name that approaches descriptiveness. In a moment the living* were dead. One of the expressions made at the moment of the destruction was that -"it fell from the sky so suddenly," it was convincing that "the end of the world had come." It was death to breathe, the darkness could be felt, and it was rent by rivers of lightning, and flowers of many colors. The plain story of the shock of the impending calamity at St. Pierre, May 8th, as appeared at Barbados, in the words, "It suddenly became intensely dark."

Among the accounts following by a week the bursting of Pelee and the death clouds, is this : All the district for miles about St. Pierre is a desolate waste. Even the whole appearance of the country has been transformed. Where there were hills there are now deep crevasses, and where there were cultivated valleys there are hills.

It is not believed that there are any persons left alive in the northern part of the island. Those who have not perished have fled either to this place or elsewhere along the south coast. How many were lost in endeavors to escape in small boats to other islands will never be known.

All that is certain is that many did take to the water in this way and of these .but very few have been heard from, There has been a heavy sea running.

Over St. Pierre and all the country for miles around there is still, even in the middle of the day, a darkness from the great black canopy of smoke that continues to rise from Mont Pelee and spread out over the sky to the horizon.