270 R. T. HILL — PELE AND THE WINDWARD ARCHIPELAGO 



how to see, other things going on, hand in hand, with the volcanic 

 eruptions, equally important to an understanding of the larger story 

 of Pete. 



While looking upward at the volcanic clouds, adding heights to the 

 mountains with each new layer of dropping ash, he should not fail to 

 note the deep fonds or V-shaped gorges radiating from the summits and 

 grooving the slopes of the pyramidal cones which have been cut by the 

 rainfall, the gnawing surf undermining the great cliffs which truncate 

 the profiles of the mountains as they reach the sea, and the growing and 

 dead shell and coral rock which cover the sea borders. Nature is tear- 

 ing down as well as building up. These are the processes of the world 

 at work, and it is important to consider them. 



The present islands represent merely the remainder or algebraic sum 

 of a long series of volcanic constructional additions and atmospheric and 

 oceanic destructional subtractions. These processes of land building and 

 destruction at present in operation are identical with those of the past 

 and tell the history of the Caribbees. They not only illustrate the origin 

 and growth of oceanic islands, and through them the embryonic growth 

 of continents, but also convey a suggestion of the totality of the actual 

 quantity of matter contributed from the earth's interior and which has 

 been piled up around these old vents. 



Of course the chief constructive factor of these processes has been 

 volcanic pile-up, like the recent eruptions of Pele, many times repeated. 

 All the islands owe their origin primarily to this heaping up of mate- 

 rial, projected to the surface through volcanic vents, even though within 

 human history there have been but few eruptions in the Caribbee 

 islands. 



In fact, it had been so long since any explosions had occurred in the 

 Caribbee islands that most geographers,* as well as the inhabitants, 

 were of the opinion that the forces which produced them were spent, 

 and classified the islands as extinct volcanoes. 



But the tocsin of Pele awakened us, and we now realize that the pro- 

 cesses of vulcanism recently so intensely manifested in some islands 

 have also been actively in operation in all the other islands, even those 

 which are not now ordinarily classified as volcanic, and it is even prob- 

 able that the calcareous islands and banks, which now show no vestiges 

 of volcanic phenomena, are old volcanic piles which have been cut down 

 by the sea, veneered by oceanic debris, and reelevated to their present 

 location. Although these eruptions have been but few in human his- 



* It is one of the most lamentable admissions of our lack of geographic knowledge to state that 

 no traveler, geologist, or explorer, previous to the disaster of 1902, has ever systematically visited 

 all these vents and craters or published anything about them as an entirety, 



