St. V{?ice?it, and Jit. Pelee^ Martinique. 335 



Blanche and Seche and not more than two hundred yards from 

 the sea coast. Its dimensions are about 22 feet higli, 30 feet 

 long and 24 feet broad (see fig. 16), and it is of the light-graj 

 andesitic lava forming one of the ancient lava beds near the 

 summit of the mountain. When I inspected this block on 

 June 25, I found it too hot on the surface to bear the hand 

 upon it long at a time ; the great mass was cracked in several 

 directions, and steam and sulphurous gases were emanating 

 from the cracks. It seems certain that this enormons block 

 was thrown out of the crater in a highly heated condition 

 during the present eruption, but it may have reached the place 

 where it now is partly through the agency of the great mud- 

 flow on which it rests. Many other great bowlders, some of 

 which are of nearly half the dimensions of the one just 

 described, lie near by on this mud plain. 



The area of distribution of the ejecta cannot be designated 

 accurately yet for lack of data. The \j. S. collier Leonidas 

 received a quarter of an inch of dust on her deck from the 

 great outburst of June 6 when she was 102 miles west of 

 Martinique. It took the ship from 3 P, M. until nearly 6 

 o'clock to traverse the cloud of dust. This eruption began at 

 10.15 A. M. and was one of the heaviest of the whole series. 

 I was in Georgetown, St. Yincent, at the time and felt the 

 shock distinctly. From 3 o'clock onward that afternoon until 

 after sunset heavy clouds of dust from the Pelee eruption 

 passed over St. Vincent, much of it falling upon the island. 

 The top of the cloud of dust as it passed over the mountains 

 seemed to me to be about 6000 feet above the sea, so that the 

 last deposits must have been made far south of St Vincent. 

 Kingstown is about 110 miles south of Mt. Pelee. The shocks 

 or detonations from some if not all of the great outbursts were 

 felt in St. Kitts and Trinidad, though not in some of the 

 intervening islands. 



Two illustrations of the force with which the bombs and 

 blocks strike may be permitted here. On the sea coast near 

 the Fort Villaret church in the portion of St. Pierre north of 

 the Poxelaue River there was a large distillery in which there 

 were four big storage tanks constructed of quarter-inch boiler 

 iron plates riveted together. These tanks look as if they had 

 been through a bombardment by artillery, being full of irregu- 

 lar holes which vary in size from mere cracks at the bottom of 

 indentations to great rents 24, 30 and even 36 inches across, 

 while a strip several feet long was torn off from each of two. 

 The direction of impact was essentially the same in all instances, 

 namely, from the crater. The other illustration is found on the 

 southeastern flanks of Mt. Pelee, along the trail leading from 



Am. Joue. Scl — Fourth Series, Yol. XIY, No. 83. — Novembee, 1902. 



