THE ERUPTION OF PELEE. 219 



THE ERUPTION OF PELEE, JULY 9, 1902. 



By Professor T. A. JAGGAR, Jr. 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



ADESCEIPTIOISr of the scene of devastation in Martinique was 

 published by the writer in this magazine in August, 1902. 

 Some of the readers of The Popular Science Monthly may be 

 interested in the details of a great eruption, and scientific deductions 

 from observation of the same; the present article aims to present the 

 results of such observation. The writer returned to Martinique from 

 Barbados in June, 1902, and had the good fortune to see an eruption 

 of first magnitude on Mount Pelee. On the evening of the ninth of 

 July, he was in Fort de France, and the commission sent out by the 

 Royal Society, Drs. Tempest Anderson and John S. Flett, were living 

 on board the sloop Minerva near Carbet; thus the scientific record kept 

 of this eruption was unusually complete. 



At 8 :15 in the evening, just at twilight, there was seen from 

 Fort de France a very high column of black dust with the character- 

 istic cauliflower surface, boiling straight up from the direction of the 

 volcano to an enormous height (compare Fig. 1). The blackness of 

 this dust cloud increased, the bulbous profile gave place to a smooth 

 balloon-shaped outline slightly flattened above, and from the moment 

 that the interior of the cloud first became obscure, small spicular 

 lightnings were seen dancing like a myriad of bright white sparks all 

 over the cloud surface. At first this whole extraordinary display was 

 perfectly silent; the writer was called out from the public library in 

 Fort de France by an attendant at about 8:20 p.m., and there was a 

 singularly oppressive stillness noticeable. When the phenomenon was 

 first observed in the streets, some slight disturbance akin to panic had 

 been audible, but the people as a whole had grown so callous to these 

 happenings, that after a few moments very few individuals seemed to 

 take any note of the extraordinary phenomena in the northwestern sky. 



At 8:30 the cloud had the form of a balloon, swelling rapidly to 

 the zenith, and filling with its diameter perhaps 70° of the sky 

 north-northwest. The wonderful coruscations grew more brilliant, 

 leaping rapidly from place to place over the surface of the cloud, but at 

 first they had the form of points of light, rather than lines. There 

 was no thunder accompanying these early flashes, and their frequency 

 was incessant, the whole cloud surface fairly scintillating with dancing 

 lights. 



