MARTINIQUE AND ST. VINCENT. 359 



landing than two more figures appeared and we had to put back for 

 them. Meantime the mountain was sending up clouds of steam from 

 all over its slopes as though it were rifting in a hundred places 

 preparatory to a titanic outburst. But it did not do anything, and 

 I now strongly suspect that what Ave saw was the product of a smart 

 shower over the mountain from the clouds lowering on its summit. 

 The cool water rills running down the slopes come into contact with 

 beds of hot dry gravel previously thrown out. Wherever such a 

 contact is made a jet of steam at once is formed ; we had opportunity 

 to see much of this action later on at St. Vincent, and it is this process 

 that has given rise to many stories of small craters forming. 



We spent another day among the ruins, exploring St. Pierre to the 

 mountain slope at its northern end and to the steep roadways that 

 climb the southern cliff. The city was in a cul de sac, hemmed in by 

 a cliff south, a higher cliff east and the ocean west ; its northern end 

 was on the actual foot slope of the volcano. The present crater was 

 blown clear of clouds as we steamed past and we saw a cup- on the 

 summit open to the west, walled in on the east, with a huge pile of 

 scaly looking hot bowlders in its midst steaming violently. At the 

 distance from which we saw it, it was estimated roughly that the cup 

 would measure perhaps 2,000 feet across by 800 feet deep. This 

 crater ends in a deep gulch west that extends down to the sea; old 

 photographs show that this gulch was there before the present erup- 

 tions. Apparently it was down this gulch that the mud flood came 

 winch overwhelmed the Guerin factory. All along the foot of the 

 mountain are steaming fan-shaped deltas of debris, and far up the 

 slopes these are matched by leaf-shaped arroyos or deep trenches hol- 

 lowed out of the old earthy volcanic beds of which much of the island 

 is composed. This trenching has been accomplished by the cloud-burst 

 torrents of water laden with grinding sand that fell during and after 

 the eruptions — in part condensed steam and in part heavy rains that 

 recently have been exceptionally abundant. Much of the material 

 which fell in the first outbursts of probably both Pelee and Soufriere 

 was dry and red hot; it was relatively fine, the largest fragments 

 falling near the vent. The grades of the hillsides were already steep 

 and it is probable that this material flowed somewhat like dry sand. 

 This, if seen at night, would account for the reports current of glow- 

 ing molten lava on Pelec. When I was in Martinique there was no 

 sign of molten rock, nor have I seen any in St. Vincent, and the greater 

 part of the evidence at present makes these eruptions purely steam 

 explosions which have blasted out and comminuted large quantities 

 of the old country rock, or bedrock of the islands, itself an ancient 

 volcanic product. 



