Volcanic Disturbances in West Indies 249 



north a-s St Thomas. Similar detona- 

 tions were heard in Barbados, but these 

 may have been from St. Vincent, where 

 the great eruption took place on this day. 



On this morning a great crevasse was 

 noticed at the base of Morne La Croix, 

 on the side toward L'Etang sec. This 

 was 100 meters long and 40 wide, and it 

 was feared might undermine the moun- 

 tain. 



In the morning the cable operator at 

 St Lucia received a message from the 

 operator at St Pierre saying, ' ' Red hot 

 stones falling here ; don't know how 

 long I can hold out." At 2 p. m. Con- 

 sul Ayme at Guadeloupe sent a message 



to the cable office and was informed that 

 all cables north and south were broken. 

 All the cables that went to Martinique 

 were broken on the 7th. 



Wednesday night, the 7th, the deto- 

 nations ceased and fine ashes fell over 

 St Pierre like rain. 



The French Governor, M. Mouttet, 

 who was at Fort de France, tried to stop 

 the panic which the volcanic disturb- 

 ance caused. He declared the danger 

 would not increase, and sent a detach- 

 ment of soldiers to prevent an exodus 

 of officials, and later went himself with 

 his wife to St Pierre, where they were 

 destroyed. 



THE CATASTROPHE 



At 6.30, May S, the Roraima, then 

 approaching St Pierre and her fate, re- 

 ported ashes falling, although the day 

 was fair and the sun bright and clear. 

 It may also be of interest to note that 

 at 7.50 on the morning of May 8 there 

 was to be a new moon in St Pierre. 



The rays of the rising sun had hardly 

 •descended over the mountain back of 

 St Pierre on the morning of the 8th 

 when, at 7.50 o'clock local time, a great 

 volcanic cloud erupted and destroyed 

 the city and its 30,000 people, seven- 

 teen ships in the anchorage, and all the 

 country places between the cliffs of the 

 Roxelane and the Riviere Blanche. The 

 phenomena of this eruption,' so far as I 

 have been able to ascertain them, were 

 as follows : 



The Witnesses. — Witnesses of this ter- 

 rible event were many, but of survivors 

 there are few. Of these I personally 

 interviewed Captain Freeman, of the 

 Roddam, and Engineers Evans and Mor- 

 ris, of the Roraima, who witnessed the 

 event from the sea side, and Mr Ferdi- 

 nand Clerc and a dozen others who ob- 

 served it from the land side. I have 

 also carefully analyzed the printed re- 

 ports of other witnesses. 



•Some of the witnesses of the erup- 



tions could see only a portion of the 

 phenomena. Father Alte Roche, at 

 Mont Verte, whose story is the most in- 

 telligible of those from the land side, 

 could see the summit, but intervening 

 ridges obscured his view of the lower 

 vent and St Pierre. This also was the 

 case with M. Levenaire,who lived north- 

 east of Morne Rouge. The witnesses 

 from the ships could see the sequence 

 of eruptions ; but as the edge of the 

 dense black aerial mass of ashes ap- 

 proached them the cloud itself cutoff 

 their observation of those things taking 

 place over the city which could be seen 

 by observers from the land side. All 

 of the witnesses, many of them fright- 

 fully injured, were too busily engaged 

 in securing their own safety to devote 

 their attention to the phenomena ex- 

 clusively. Two have given unusually 

 intelligible and accurate accounts of 

 what they witnessed. These are Father 

 Alte Roche, of Mont Verte, and Second 

 Engineer Chas. Evans, of the Roraima. 

 I was associated with the latter for a 

 week upon our return on the Dixie. 

 The story of Father Alte Roche was 

 given by Mr Skinner in the New York 

 Times. Many other witnesses have 

 noted important single facts. 



