A CAMP IN A CRATER. 185 
lives and ruined several estates. It lasted three days, 
commencing on or near that fatal. day, in 1812, when 
Caracas was destroyed, and ten thousand souls per- 
ished in a moment of time. 
Ashes from this volcano descended upon Barbados, 
ninety-five miles to wendward; and this fact is cited 
by Elisé Reclus, in “The Ocean,” to show the force 
of different aerial currents: “On the first day of May, 
1812, when the north-east trade-wind was in all its 
force, enormous quantities of ashes obscured the 
atmosphere above the island of Barbados, and covered 
the ground with a thick layer. One would have sup- 
. posed that they came from the volcanoes of the Azores, 
which were to the north-east ; nevertheless they were 
cast up by the crater in St. Vincent, one hundred miles 
to the west. It is therefore certain that the debris had 
been hurled, by the force of the eruption, above the 
moving sheet of the tradé-winds into an aerial river 
proceeding in a contrary direction.” 
Since that terrible outburst the volcano has remained 
inactive; having done its allotted work, it rested. 
An eye-witness thus describes its appearance previ- 
ous to the eruption: “About three thousand feet above 
sea-level, on the south “side of the mountain, opened 
a circular chasm exceeding half a mile in diameter, 
and between four hundred and five hundred feet in 
depth. Exactly in the center rose a conical hill nearly 
three hundred feet in height, and about two hundred 
in diameter, richly covered and variegated with shrubs, 
brushwood, and vines about half-way up, and the re- 
mainder covered over with virgin sulphur to the top. 
From the fissures of the cone a thin white smoke was. 
constantly emitted, occasionally tinged with a slight, 
