St. Vincent, and 2ft. Pelee^ Martinique. 323 



of the Soufriere east of the large crater and south of the small 

 one is formed bj a rather small plateau which slopes s^ently 

 toward the southeast, closely analogous in position to the small 

 high plateau on Mt. Pelee. This plateau was covered with a 

 bed of dust, lapilli and bowlders which was ten and fifteen 

 feet thick in places, and the trenches cut bj recent rains made 

 traveling very laborious, except near the edge of the crater. 



In spite of clouds and rain, this visit, through occasional 

 glimpses of the interior, enabled me to determine that the 

 crater of 1812, which for nearly a century has gone by the 

 name of the " Xew " crater, took no active part in the erup- 

 tions of May of the present year, a conclusion based on the 

 following considerations : the saddle between the two craters 

 appeared to be intact, confirming the observations made from 

 the other side of the large crater ; a knife-edge ridge which 

 ran at a steep incline from the saddle to the bottom of the 

 small crater and formed the pathway for descent into it before 

 the eruption, was still there, and had on its slopes bare trunks 

 of trees standing ; in the bottom of the crater along the base 

 of this ridge one could see talus slopes of dry (?) dust and 

 lapilli which had slid and rolled down its sides ; although the 

 roaring of the steam and boiling water nearly half a mile 

 below us in the large crater was obtrusively discernible, no 

 sound whatever came from within the crater of 1812 ; the rim 

 of the small crater showed less and less dust as one receded 

 from the edge of the great crater. Samuel Brown, a ranger, 

 or caretaker, on the Lot 11 estate on the southeast slopes of the 

 Soufriere, who was our guide when we reached the small 

 crater,, told us that he watched the eruption of May 7 until 

 the great outburst at two o'clock and that no cloud of steam 

 or "smoke" rose from the small crater. Furthermore, at the 

 time of my leaving the island, June 10, no column of steam had 

 risen above that crater since May T. Brown was at the sugar 

 factory of the estate, three and one-half miles in a straight line 

 east-southeast from the crater, a most favorable spot from 

 which to observe what was o:oinD' on at the summit of the 

 mountain, and he saved his life by running into the rum cellar 

 of the factory and closing the door and the window shutters 

 just before the volcanic blast swept over the building. Inquiry 

 in Georgetown found persons who had watched the eruption 

 from the town and had noted the fact that no column of steam 

 rose from the small crater. 



The Soufriere, and, in fact, the whole of the island of St. 

 Yincent, is made up of ancient lava flows alternating with vol- 

 canic fragmental deposits or tuff agglomerates.^ These ancient 



* The alternation of lava beds and tnflEs is well illustrated in fig. 5, p. 351. 



