54 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 14, 



event are indelibly engraven on the mountain itself, and I think there 

 is enough to enable one to read the history of former commotions 

 from the data still extant. 



In the remarks made on that eruption of the St. Vincent Souifriere 

 which took place in 1812, one fact seems to have been generally over- 

 looked, namely, the many eruptions that preceded it in the same 

 place. That something of the kind had formerly happened seems to 

 be implied by the local acceptation of the word Souffriere, but no 

 account of it, written or traditional, has travelled down to us. The 

 fact of many previous eruptions is abundantly proved by the exist- 

 ence of vegetable mould now lying between the strata near the bottom 

 of the last-made chasm ; and we may in some instances conclude, that 

 a long period of quiescence intervened between the convulsions from 

 the great thickness of the vegetable layers, particularly that one which 

 seems to separate the matter of the second last eruption from that 

 which immediately preceded it. We should have been ia utter ig- 

 norance of these data, were it not for the almost perpendicular sides 

 of the new crater ; but there the mountain exhibits the record laid 

 up in its own bosom, and shows the lines by which nature has di- 

 vided the times of its convulsions. 



Many have wondered why a new opening was made almost in con- 

 tact with that already yawning, and which seemed ample enough to 

 discharge the contents of the mighty cauldron ; but they forget that 

 a greater mass was to be emitted than was contained in the outward 

 cavity of the old crater, and that nature works by the simplest 

 modes : when the boiling matter rushed furiously forward for escape, 

 and found the already choked orifice too small for its volume, it 

 sought a new opening in the quarter where it was likely to meet with 

 the least resistance, and this was the side on which the new crater 

 now gapes. The incumbent matter was more easily displaced from 

 its want of coherence, and the lowness of the side next the Charaib 

 country facilitated its exit. During the eruption of 1812 no lava 

 issued from the mountain, but torrents of scoriae and boiling water 

 ran down its sides with a fury that defied all resistance. On com- 

 paring the layers that indicate the eruption of 1812 with the strata of 

 eruption long antecedent, a correspondence is observed not only in 

 the similarity of the matter of those layers, but in the order of their 

 ejection. 



In ascending the foot of the mountain on the east side, I visited 

 the dry bed of a lake which was formed during the last eruption : 

 the sides were about 80 feet deep, in some parts perpendicular, and 

 formed of volcanic mud and pumice. The lake lasted only a few 

 days ; the water was arrested by the debris and other obstacles ; it was 

 supposed to have been upwards of 100 feet deep, but eventually burst 

 its barrier, and overwhelmed some sugar-plantations. On the west 

 side in descending the mountain, I crossed a dry bed of the old Ra- 

 baca river ; it was nearly one mile wide, and one continued bed of 

 immense boulders and sand and pumice-stones. I should consider 

 the width of the old crater to be full a quarter of a mile, and the 

 depth to the water about 700 or 800 feet. Before the eruption, a 



