316 ERUPTIUN OF THE SOUFRIERE IN ST. VINCENT. 



lation with terror. The noises were as loud as those of the tirst erup- 

 tion, iind th(> lightning was ver}^ vivid. On the leeward side complete 

 darkness prevailed, and ashes and sand fell freely for some hours. In 

 Georgetown the fall of ashes was (piite inconsiderable, not exceeding 

 a thin film on the roofs of the houses. Gradually the noises lessened, 

 the darkness lifted, and the moon appeared again. No lives were lost 

 and practically no damage was done, but exactly what happened on 

 those parts of the mountain nearest the crater it is, under the circum- 

 stances, impossible to say. This second eruption was the last which 

 proceeded from the main crater. Clouds of steam were sometimes 

 seen gently rising for some days later, but nothing of the nature of a 

 volcanic outl)urst has since taken place. 



We arrived at Kingstown on Tuesday, June 10, and proceeded at 

 once to Chateaubelair, where Mr. James E. Richards, of Kingstown, 

 kindly placed a house at our disposal. The geological products of this 

 eruption proved to be of very simple charactei*. The Soufriere and 

 the surrounding country were covered with a layer of ashes mostly in 

 the form of tine, dark-colored sand, but mixed with spongy bombs of 

 various sizes, and many ejected blocks composed of fragments of the 

 old rocks of the hill. Lapilli and scoria are there in plenty, as is 

 obvious where the heavy rains have washed away the finer material, 

 but the greater part of the ejecta consists of fine sand, which when dry 

 and hot is yellowish gray in color, but when wet becomes almost 

 black. This sand, as has already })een noted by many observers, con- 

 tains plagioclase feldspar, hypersthene, augite, magnetite, and frag- 

 ments of glass, and represents a fairly well cr3^stalized hj^persthene- 

 andesite magna which has been l)lo\vn to powder by the expansion of 

 occluded steam. 



The coarser material is mostly a slaggy andesite with crystals of 

 plagioclase and pyroxene. There is little pumice, though we obtained 

 a few fragments which floated on water and contained but few crystals 

 visible to the naked eye. The larger bombs are often black, highly 

 lustrous, and glassy when broken across. Some were seen at Wallibu 

 (1 miles from the crater) 3 feet in diameter. The ejected blocks con- 

 sist of weathered andesites and andesitic tuflFs such as can be seen in 

 the walls of the crater. They are ver}' numerous, and some are over 

 5 feet across. In addition to these, fine-grained, dark-green banded 

 rocks occur, which appear to be baked and indurated sediments, prob- 

 ably the nmd from the bottom of the crater lake or the finer beds 

 intercalated in the older volcanic series. Another tyi)e of ejected 

 block which is very common in some parts of the hill is a coarse- 

 grained aggregate of feldspar, hornblende ())rown under the micro- 

 scope), and perhaps olivine. It is not vesicular and contains little or 

 no glass, being apparently holocrystalline. These rocks are very fria- 

 ble, and the crystals are loosely aggregated together. Tlie}^ seemed 



