CONTRIBUTION TO EARTH'S SURFACE 255 



The thickness of ashes which fell upon the island, partially burying 

 the ruins of the city of Saint Pierre and which added to the height of the 

 mountain, conveys no adequate idea of the quantity of matter ejected. 



It is safe to believe that only a small per cent of all the solid debris 

 thus discharged immediately fell around the crater to add to the previous 

 mass of the island. Proportionately the quantity of ashes blown into 

 the air from each discharge of the volcano which would fall back on the 

 slopes of the mountain would be comparable to that which would fall 

 back on the platform of a great gun like that at Sandy Hook, should it 

 be loaded with similar ashes, pointed vertically and discharged a mile 

 upward into the air. The remainder distributed into the atmosphere, 

 as ashes, fell over the sea for hundreds of miles, finally settling even on 

 its deepest floors. 



It is no idle fancy that the total work of the recent eruption of Pele, 

 including the solids now preserved on the island, those which have been 

 carried away by wave and wind, and the gases and vapors contributed 

 to the atmosphere and oceans, has equaled a mass of material trans- 

 ferred from the earth's interior to its exterior from this one small vent 

 probably as large in bulk as the whole island of Martinique itself. 



Such were the phenomena most conspicuous to the eye of one only 

 of the periods of eruption of Pele. As gigantic as they were in their 

 manifestations — the new layers of ash added to the soil, the increased 

 height added to the mountain, and the marvelous plug or spine — they 

 give but a feeble idea of the total accomplishment of this underground 

 mechanism of Pele, for it had been thus working near its present sight 

 at intervals for countless ages. To convey some idea of what this work 

 has been constitutes an important chapter in the larger story of Pele. 



The larger Story 

 character and antiquity of pele 



The volcano Pele is an old feature, which, measured in human time, 

 has existed for an inestimable period. From the arrival of Columbus 

 its features had but little modification until the recent outbreak. Twice 

 only in the intervening 400 years have its conduits opened to add new 

 layers of ash to the older pile. The recent eruption of Pele is merely 

 the hereditary successor of a long line of prehistoric eruptions which 

 have intermittently occurred at this same approximate locality for 

 thousands of years. 



In fact, the mass of the present island has been built almost entirely 

 from the ashes of similar spasmodic eruptions, separated by long inter- 

 vals of time, as can be seen from the arrangement of the layers deposited 



