The volcano's deadly work, from the fall of Pompeii to the destruction of St. Pierre ...

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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 complete, 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 glowing 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 xl

written. It is a story that should be read far and wide throughout the land and the memory of the terrible disaster thus fitly preserved. 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 frightful 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 leagues 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 xii

PREFACE without a deep sense of awe and a feeling of the instability of man's works and the insecurity of human life. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and it is also more absorbing and thoughtcompelling 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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Chapter I

The Volcano and the Earthquake, Earth's Demons of Destruction.

TO most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this terrestrial 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

2 17 i§ 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 illconditioned 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 destroying, 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 lifegiving streams, bringing famine and misery to lands of plenty and comfort, almost making the blood to boil in our veins. Its antithesis, 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 suffering 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, and of it at least I am sure?"

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, slumbering 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 flow in glowing and burning 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 smiling face.

THE SUBTERRANEAN POWERS

The subterranean powers here spoken of, those we had denominated 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 way upward through the mountain, and to carry with them dissolved rocks, and the stones which block their passage. Sometimes, 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 habitation 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 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 181 2, 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 Lipari 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 glow from the fires of Vulcan's forge. This old myth is in many respects more consonant with the facts of nature than myths usually are. In agreement 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 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 underground 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 civilization 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 possibly 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 resuit of the explosive force of which we have spoken, the mountain 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 subsequent 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 contrary, 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 surrounding country, and associated with which are underground explosions that seem like the sound of distant artillery. The mountain quivers with internal convulsions, due to the efforts of its confined forces to find an opening. The drying up of wells and disappearance of springs are apt to take place, the water sinking downward through cracks newly made in the rocks. Finally the fierce unchained 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. Floating 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 become suddenly condensed with the chill of the upper atmosphere and fall as rain, torrents of which often follow an eruption. The rain, falling through the clouds of volcanic dust, brings it to the 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 eruption 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 with 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 form 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 abundance that their decay caused a fever in the vicinity. The volcanoes of Java have often buried large tracts of fertile country under volcanic mud.

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 eruption ; 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 the 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.

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 surprise for any geologist. In truth it should have been expected, 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 running 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 appearance and history show that they are fully the rivals of Vesuvius in destructive power. Being situated on islands, and consequently 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 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 magnitude.

Leeward and Windward are the names given by mariners to the islands comprising 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 AVEST 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 strongf.

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 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 it 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 mountains, 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.