The Eruptions of La Soufriere 



453 



an hour in advance of the great outburst 

 of May 7, which seems to have been due 

 to the bodily discharge of a portion, at 

 least, of the old crater lake into the head- 

 waters of that stream. Survivors who 

 attempted to cross the Rabaka Dry River 

 toward noon of that day report that they 

 were prevented by a torrent of "boil- 

 ing-hot " water and mud rushing down 

 the valley, and that a wall of water and 

 mud fifty or more feet high (they com- 

 pared it with the height of a factory 

 chimney) came out of the upper reaches 

 of the river and swept out to sea. There 

 was no heavy rain that day before the 

 eruption took place, but the lake still 

 was in the crater early in the da)', ac- 

 cording to the tale of a fish-woman who 

 had ascended the mountain from George- 

 town that morning on her way home to 

 Chateaubelair. The trail led along the 

 rim of the crater for half a mile. The 

 woman reached the rim at 9 o'clock 

 and found that fissures had appeared in 

 the ground, and that the lake was at a 

 higher level than usual and boiling. 

 She rushed back to Georgetown to warn 

 the people, but her tale was discredited. 

 Mr MacDonald's notes contain the en- 

 tries : "12.55 P- m - — Enormous dis- 

 charge to windward side ; color, darker. 

 1 p. m. — Tremendous roaring; stones 

 thrown out to windward thousands of 

 feet."* While this does not prove the 

 bodily out-throw of the lake, it shows 

 that there was a great outburst from the 

 crater just in advance of the flood in the 

 Dry River Valley. The dust and lapilli 

 thrown out by the volcano before this 

 hour must have passed through the 

 waters of the lake, as seemed to be hap- 

 pening on a small scale while we were 

 looking into the crater May 31. 



It is evident that there was a blast or 

 a series of blasts of hurricane violence 

 from the crater of La Soufriere as well 

 as from that of Mont Pelee, as a feature 

 of the eruptions of 1902. The effects 



Century Magazine, vol. lxiv, p. 639, Au- 

 gust, 1902. 



were not so appalling, however, on St 

 Vincent as on Martinique, because no 

 large city was destroyed there. The 

 overturned trees constitute the principal 

 evidence on the island of St Vincent. 

 They all point away from the crater, 

 except for slight modifications due to 

 local topography, and their roots are 

 denuded of bark and show charring on 

 the side nearest the crater, while the 

 farther side preserves the bark unin- 

 jured. The trunks of the trees show 

 the same condition — denuded and 

 charred on the side nearest the crater, 

 uninjured on the farther side. The 

 villages of Wallibu and Richmond, 

 on the leeward coast, were in much 

 the same relation to La Soufriere that 

 St Pierre was to Mont Pelee. Wal- 

 libu was carried down into the ocean 

 by a landslide during the eruption of 

 May 7, while Richmond was buried 

 under from 5 to 20 feet of lapilli and 

 dust. 



The blasts extended radially in all 

 directions from the crater, suggesting 

 the explanation that great volumes of 

 steam, rising from the throat of the vol- 

 cano, could not find room for expansion 

 upward, on account of the cushion 

 formed by the column of steam and 

 ashes which had preceded them, and 

 the ashes falling therefrom, and that 

 they expanded with explosive vio- 

 lence horizontally and downward, 

 following the configuration of the 

 mountain. This accords with the tes- 

 timony of Mr MacDonald and other 

 eyewitnesses of the eruptions who say 

 that they saw the clouds of "smoke" 

 (dust-laden steam) rushing down the 

 sides of the mountain with terrific 

 speed. This dust-laden steam was able 

 to do much work of erosion, as is shown 

 by the horizontally scoured sides of 

 some of the exposed cliffs and by the 

 trunks and roots of overturned trees. 

 The roots particularly have been charred 

 by the heat and carved into fantastic, 

 pointed shapes, as if they had been sub- 



