The Lesser Antilles 347 



the keg have been turned by the hot sulphur blast of 

 that day of terror into iron pyrites, iron sulphide, many 

 of them having assumed crystalline forms. The 

 chemical action which turned nails into crystals of iron 

 sulphide was too great to be resisted by poor human 

 flesh and blood, which shriveled into ashes before it. 

 I can faintly imagine what must have been the agony of 

 the moment. On the first day of August in the year 

 1887 I made the ascent of Asama-yama, one of the 

 huge volcanoes of Japan, rising over eight thousand feet 

 above the plains of the Kwanto. I was accompanied 

 by a small troop of faithful Japanese attendants. The 

 column of steam and sulphur-smoke rising from the 

 crater was ascending in a perpendicular column a mile 

 in height above the mountain-top, and then spreading 

 out like a huge umbrella in the upper air. The day 

 was still ; not a breath of air was stirring. I undertook 

 to measure the circumference of the crater, and had 

 almost completed the task, when the servant who was 

 standing nearest to me rushed toward me, seized me by 

 the arm, and pointing upward exclaimed: 'The cloud! 

 Quick! run! ' Before I had time to even reflect, I in- 

 haled a breath of the excoriating sulphur-fumes. It was 

 as if I had been stabbed in the vitals. I held my nose. 

 I shut my mouth. I tried to run. I was forced again 

 to open my mouth; again I was stabbed in the lungs. 

 I stumbled, I fell, I rolled down a slope of lava-ashes. 

 I gathered myself up, and again I ran, and at last 

 beyond the reach of the white cloud which now was 

 pouring in dense folds over the very spot where I had 

 been standing a few moments before, I sank down 

 exhausted. A wind suddenly rising was driving the 

 fumes away to the west. For days afterwards it was 

 painful to take a long breath and my mouth and throat 



