THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



vast clouds as it was liberated from the flowing mass, so that the 

 statement made by some observers, that streams of lava flowed 

 from the crater, is not surprising. The clouds of steam carried 

 away into the atmosphere enormous quantities of the finest ash. 

 These dust-flows, however, down the Riviere Blanche must not 

 be confounded with the mud-flows down the same canon and 

 down the outer slopes of the mountain. 



Studies on the other islands of the Caribbean chain lead to the 

 conclusion that the Soufriere of Guadeloupe and the peak of 

 Saba have had essentially the history through which Pelee 

 is now passing, though without the formation of a single promi- 

 nent spine. The analogy is especially close in the case of Guade- 

 loupe, where the present Soufriere is a great cone ribbed with 

 masses of solid lava filling and rising above the ancient crater. 

 There is no definite pitlike opening in Pelee now, nor is there 

 such a crater on Guadeloupe's Soufriere or the peak of Saba, 

 though there is a shallow oval bowl in the top of the last named. 

 Bread-crust bombs, like those so abundantly thrown out by the 

 present action of Pelee, occur on Guadeloupe and Saba. 



The full description of the new cone and spine and of other 

 changes observed on and about the mountain, such as the filling 

 of the gorge of the Riviere Blanche by dust and boulders from 

 the crater, the effect of erosion on the mountain slopes, the en- 

 croaching of vegetation on the limits of the area devastated by 

 the earlier eruptions, and the antiquated appearance of the ruins 

 of St. Pierre must be left to a more comprehensive report. 



LA SOUFRIERE, ST. VINCENT. 



St. Vincent recovers more slowly than Martinique from the 

 great eruptions of 1902. This is due not only to the greater 

 amount of ash thrown out by the Soufriere, lait also to tlie higher 

 specific gravity of the material, which prevents its being washed 

 off the ground as rapidly as the dust from Pelee. The region 

 which was devastated by the May eruptions and revisited with 

 tomadic blasts in September and October, 1902, still is bare of 

 vegetation, exce])t as new licrbage lias sjjrung u]) from roots 



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