230 The National Geographic Magazine 



the forces which produced them were 

 spent, and classified them as extinct 

 volcanoes. Hurricanes, plagues, mis- 

 government, and French-English wars 

 played frequent havoc with these peo- 

 ple, but the calamity resulting from the 

 explosion of these volcanoes is one of 

 which they hardly dreamed. They 

 looked upon the verdure-clad slopes onh r 

 as the home of the sprites and goblins 

 which abound in their peculiar folklore, 

 and of the dreaded fer de lance, one of 

 the most fatal serpents in existence, 

 which inhabits only the islands of Mar- 

 tinique and St Lucia. Even the previ- 

 ous eruptions in Guadeloupe and St 

 Vincent and Martinique in [851 had not 

 disturbed their faith in the perfect secur- 

 ity of the beloved monies. 



Within human history there have be- 

 fore been but two serious eruptions in 

 the Caribbee Islands, and both of them 

 were in St Vincent ( 1 7 1 8 and 1 8 1 2) , but 

 one of the latter, like the present catas- 

 trophe, was one of the most appalling 

 and destructive the world has ever seen. 

 In 1 81 2 the mountain of Morne Garon, 

 on the Island of St. Vincent, about 90 

 miles south of Martinique, erupted. 

 The explosion was a most fatal and far- 

 reaching cataclysm, being equaled in 

 recent years only by that of Krakatoa, 

 in the Straits of Sunda. It was pre- 

 ceded hy earthquakes. In Caracas 

 10,000 persons were buried in a single 

 moment, and after this great event ruin 

 was wrought all along the line of the 

 Andes \>y earthquakes. 



All down the range of the Antilles 

 from Saba to Grenada there is hardly 

 an island without its ' ' soufriere ' ' or 

 solfatara — the crater, it would seem, of 

 some volcano whose eruptive energy 

 has dwindled into that milder form. 

 Some of these soufrieres are wholly or 

 almost extinct, and have subsided into 

 mere yellow-tinged ashpits, where per- 

 haps the scanty thread of light vapor or 

 a tepid spring finds its way through the 

 surface. Others again are still active. 



The soufrieres or craters of the Carib- 

 bee Islands are not symmetrical cones 

 sloping within to a central vent, but are 

 of the type known as calderas — that is, 

 broad flat basins within the area of a 

 larger broken encircling rim, marked 

 by vents with more or less sub-vertical 

 walls, exhibiting the stratified layers of 

 ejecta of former explosions. The walls 

 of the vents or pits are destructional 

 and not constructional, as are the walls 

 of typical lapilli and lava cones. 



Although called quiescent, the vol- 

 canoes of several of the Caribbee Islands 

 have shown more or less evidence of con- 

 tinuous activity. The soufrieres of 

 Guadeloupe and St Lucia and Mt Mis- 

 ery on St Kitts have almost continu- 

 ously ejected small jets of steam ; the 

 ' ' Boiling Lake ' ' of Dominica ma}' also 

 be considered as a volcanic manifesta- 

 tion. Numerous hot springs on most 

 of the islands also indicated the presence 

 comparatively near the surface of great 

 heat in the rocks. 



The northern islands of the necklace, 

 like Saba and St Eustatius, are simpler 

 volcanic piles with dominating crater 

 cones, but the center of the chain con- 

 sists of five larger islands — Guadeloupe, 

 Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, and St 

 Vincent — each of which is a complicated 

 mass of ancient combined constructional 

 and destructional forms, accompanied 

 • by a few volcanic vents, whose peaks 

 attain their greatest height in Mount 

 Diablotin in Dominica. 



The Island of St Eustatius, 2,000 feet 

 in altitude, is a typical crater form and 

 is surrounded by a depression called the 

 Punch Bowl. 



St Kitts is dominated by Mount Mis- 

 ery, with a summit crater 1,000 feet 

 deep which is a lake in the rainy season. 

 Hundreds of fissures in the flank of the 

 mountain continue to emit solfataric sul- 

 phurous gas. Montserrat has two cul- 

 minating peaks. One of these is a cone 

 called La Soufriere, from which hot 

 vapors still erupt. 



