MECHANISM AND WORK OF PELE 247 



The cone or summit (somma) crowning the old ash pile of Pele prior to 

 the present series of eruptions was not exactly funnel shaped, but prac- 

 tically a deep, flat bowl (caldera) within the approximate top of the 

 mountain, the rim of which was somewhat irregular, with walls rising 

 from 16 to 21 feet above the level of its bottom. The highest peak of 

 the old mountain, approximately 4,300 feet, represented a portion of the 

 rim of the summit bowl. The particular feature of this crater bowl of 

 human interest was the great gash or break in its western side leading 

 out to the rivers which flow toward the northern suburbs of Saint Pierre. 

 This gash, known as La Fente, played an important part in the minor 

 natural incident, the destruction of Saint Pierre. It must be admitted, 

 however, that the chief feature of the surface mechanism of Pele was a 

 summit cone, and the present paper does not concern the details of its 

 minor accompanying phenomena, which have been so fully presented 

 by Professor Hovey and foreign geologists. 



There is a popular misconception that volcanoes are engines of de- 

 struction, and hence in the earlier days of excitement immediately 

 following the extermination of Saint Pierre there were many rumors 

 and prophecies of geologic disaster. Dispatches asserted the lowering of 

 the mountain tops and the sinking of the bottoms of the Caribbean sea. 

 It was announced that great fissures had opened in the ocean and the 

 dome of the island had been blown away. The instability of the earth's 

 crust in the vicinity was dwelt on and the early destruction of the island 

 by explosion and tidal waves was predicted. 



The awe-inspiring aspects of this work which attracted human inter- 

 est, when considered separately and from the human view-point, were 

 locally destructive, but the destruction, as we shall show, was but trivial 

 in comparison to the great constructive work of building up accom- 

 plished by the general incident. 



The apparent work was the expulsion of clouds of steam and ashes? 

 accompanied by showers of stone and debris dislodged from the old 

 crater walls or floor, the discharge of streams of hot boulders and hot 

 mud down the valley of the radiating rivers leading toward Saint Pierre, 

 the deposition of quantities of lapilli over the surface of the surrounding 

 area, and the later protrusion of the wonderful spine. 



But before any of these things happened the volcano was at work 

 within, and this first phase of the work, and that which is least under- 

 stood, was the great chemical reorganization of the matter beneath the 

 surface. The molten magma, rocks, lapilli, and all other material seen 

 at the surface were but secondary products of larger primary work within 

 the earth by which the elements there existing in some entirely different 

 state were transformed and recombined into the materials as we now see 



