A CAMP IN A CRATER. I 85 



lives and ruined several estates. It lasted three days, 

 commencing on or near that fatal day, in 1812, when 

 Caracas was destroyed, and ten thousand souls per- 

 ished in a moment of time. 



Ashes from this volcano descended upon Barbados, 

 ninety-five miles to windward ; and this fact is cited 

 b}' Elise Reclus, in "The Ocean," to show the force 

 of different aerial currents : "On the first day of May, 

 181 2, when the north-east 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 sup- 

 posed that they came from the volcanoes of the Azores, 

 which were to the north-east ; 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." 



Since that terrible outburst the volcano has remained 

 inactive ; having done its allotted work, it rested. 



An eye-witness thus describes its appearance previ- 

 ous to the eruption : " About three thousand feet above 

 sea-level, on the south side of the mountain, opened 

 a circular chasm exceeding half a mile in diameter, 

 and between four hundred and five hundred feet in 

 depth. Exactly in the center rose a conical hill nearly 

 three hundred feet in height, and about two hundred 

 in diameter, richly covered and variegated with shrubs, 

 brushwood, and vines about half-way up, and the re- 

 mainder covered over with virgin sulphur to the top. 

 From the fissures of the cone a thin white smoke was 

 constantly emitted, occasionally tinged with a slight. 



