NATURE 



11 



THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1903. 



THE ERUPTIONS OF MONT PELhE. 

 Mont Pelie and the Tragedy of Martinique. By Angelo 

 Heilprin. Pp. xiii + 335. (Philadelphia and 

 London : J. B. Lippincott Company.) Price 155. 

 net. 



THERE have been not a few greater catastrophes 

 than that in which the city of St. Pierre was anni- 

 hilated, and all its inhabitants (with only one or two 

 exceptions) killed in a few minutes, but the peculiar 

 circumstances of that tragedy have combined to bestow 

 on it a great amount of interest. The city was one 

 of the fairest in the western hemisphere, and no less 

 famous for its profligacy than for its beauty. The 

 suddenness with which it was destroyed, the awful 

 circumstances with which this was attended, and the 

 strange and almost unprecedented nature of the 

 calamity have all combined to lend it a peculiar horror. 

 At first the newspapers were filled with lurid and inco- 

 herent accounts of what had taken place, and all 

 manner of exaggerations regarding the condition of 

 Martinique were mingled with the most gloomy fore- 

 bodings regarding the future of the island. In course 

 of time a more rational spirit prevailed, but it is per- 

 haps even yet too soon to expect a calm and entirely 

 scientific study of all the remarkable features of the 

 catastrophe. 



Meanwhile the facts are being carefully sifted by 

 various scientific men, and to the brief reports already 

 published by Prof. R. T. Hill, Mr. E. O. Hovey, and 

 ihe Commissioners of the French Academy of Science, 

 this most interesting volume by Prof. Heilprin is a very 

 welcome addition. In many ways the author of this 

 book combines the qualifications necessary for success- 

 ful treatment of the subject. He is an eminent natur- 

 alist, a much travelled geographer, and to his scien- 

 tific knowledge he adds a dauntless courage which has 

 enabled him to face calmly all the dangers of the 

 dreaded volcano of Martinique. The book, moreover, 

 is written in a style so graphic and vigorous that the 

 reader is carried along in breathless interest, and no 

 one who can enjoy a thrilling tale of adventure, how- 

 ever little he may be interested in scientific theories 

 about volcanoes, could possibly put it down until he had 

 reached the concluding page. The photographic illus- 

 trations are excellent. Many of them have been taken 

 from Prof. Heilprin 's negatives; others are from other 

 sources, and have already appeared in the newspapers. 



To those who have followed carefully the history of 

 the eruptions, there is a great deal in the book that 

 is not new. Much of it has appeared already in maga- 

 zine articles by Prof. Heilprin and other writers, but 

 even when following a well-worn path, the author is 

 never dull, and his resume of the earlier accounts is 

 valuable, if only because he was one of the first 

 scientific men to reach the island after the tragedy, and 

 had in consequence special facilities for sifting the 

 evidence before that rank growth of misstatement and 

 exaggeration, which rapidly sprang up, had time to 

 reach its full development. This, however, is merely 

 the prelude to his tale, and the interest deepens when 

 NO. 1752, VOL. 68] 



he describes the efforts he made to obtain a view of 

 the crater near the summit of the mountain, and to 

 study the processes at work there. He was the first 

 to reach the actual summit after the tragedy of May, 

 1902, but luck was against him, and the mountain was 

 veiled in mist ; next day he returned, but still was 

 unable to make out the details of the interior of the 

 crater. In this he was not more unfortunate than other 

 observers ; we met a newspaper correspondent in Fort 

 de France last year who had been five times on the 

 top of Montagne Pel6e, and had failed to secure a 

 single photograph that would bear reproduction. As 

 a matter of fact, those who would learn the condition 

 of the crater should refer to the descriptions by Mr. 

 Hovey and Prof. Lacroix, whose accounts are much 

 clearer than those given in the book before us. 



Though baffled, he was not defeated, and in the 

 month of August Prof. Heilprin returned to Martin- 

 ique to renew his investigations. He again ascended 

 the mountain from its eastern base, and this time it 

 is clear that he had a very narrow escape with his 

 life. The volcano was very active, and was emitting 

 a vast cloud of dust and casting great bombs for 

 hundreds of 5'ards from the crater. The descriptions 

 of the scenes on the upper part of the volcanic cone 

 are vivid, and to those who know with what sudden- 

 ness the deadly black cloud can rise from the crater 

 and sweep down the mountain slopes to the sea, it is 

 evident that the party carried their lives in their hands. 

 Not much information of scientific value was likely to 

 be obtained in the circumstances, for it was im- 

 possible to approach sufficiently near the crater to see 

 what was going on there. Prof. Lacroix has subse- 

 quently ascertained that what was at first regarded 

 as an interior cone of ash is really a solid pillar of 

 lava rising up from the bottom of the crater until it 

 overtops the former summit of the mountain. The 

 lava of Montagne Pel^e, in fact, is so viscous and so 

 nearly consolidated that it is being forced out as ice 

 or lead can be forced through a narrow orifice under 

 great pressure. So long as it is in its present con- 

 dition it cannot possibly flow over the ground, and 

 when the steam within it expands the mass is in large 

 part shivered into dust. 



The second fatal eruption of Pel^e, that in which 

 the village of Morne Rouge was destroyed and 2000 

 lives were lost, took place when Prof. Heilprin was 

 residing on the mountain. His narrative of the events 

 is wonderfully graphic, and though the fatal cloud was 

 discharged at night, and in the darkness it was not 

 possible to see exactly what happened, it is quite certain 

 that the eruption was of the same type as that in which 

 St. Pierre was levelled with the ground. Next day 

 Prof. Heilprin visited the scene of the disaster and 

 interviewed the survivors. Their experiences seem to 

 have been very similar to those of the inhabitants of 

 the Carib country of St. \ incent during the great 

 eruption of May 7. The chapters of this book 

 in which the story of this eruption is recor4ed are a 

 very valuable contribution to the scientific history of 

 the activity of Montagne Pel<5e. 



The concluding chapter, in which the phenomena of 

 the eruption are discussed, is in some ways not the 

 least interesting in the book. From it we learn th-Jt 



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