338 E. 0. Hovey—Ericj>tions of 1902 of La Soufriere, 



until the point of rock on the northeast, already mentioned, is 

 reached again. This great crater is about half a mile across, an 

 estimate that is based upon the proportion which it bears to the 

 height of the mountain, looked at from the sea, and from the 

 fact that it took us twenty minutes to walk along the southern 

 third of the rim from our first cairn to the Riviere Blanche 

 gorge without stopping. The walking was not bad, consider- 

 ing the location of the route, and I should estimate the distance 

 traveled in this time at not less than half a mile. 



The breadth of the rim varies from a mere knife-edge on the 

 south, north and northeast sides to a sloping plateau fifty 

 to one hundred yards wide on the eastern side. This plateau 

 is the site of the Lac des Palmistes, which was considered to be 

 the old crater lake of Mt. Pelee. Studying this plateau care- 

 fully, we saw that it sloped gently southward and eastward from 

 one side of a low divide running northeastward from Morne 

 Lacroix across to a high ridge which paralleled the northern 

 and northeastern sides of the crater. On the northwest side 

 of this divide, the altitude of which was 3950 feet above tide, 

 there is a shallow valley which rapidly changes into a gorge 

 discharging into the canyon of the Frecheur River. Heilprin's 

 description* and his unpublished photographs show the existence 

 on the plateau of a small lake-basin not more than five or six 

 feet deep. He and his companion, E. E. Leadbeater, a ^New 

 York photographer, state, furthermore, that this plateau and 

 this portion of the crater rim were entirely or practically free 

 from ash and dust deposit. When Curtis and 1 visited the 

 spot, June 18 and 20, the surface was coated with a thick layer 

 (more than four feet deep in places) of dust and ashes, probably 

 from the great eruption of June 6. This materal had drifted 

 into depressions to such an extent that we saw no indication of 

 the existence of a lake-basin in this plateau. We had a per- 

 fectly clear and cloudless period when on the spot, and saw the 

 topography with distinctness. I cannot think that the plateau, 

 including the lake basin, ever has been a primary crater or 

 center of eruption, though at the time of my visits the ground 

 was hot, a scalding temperature being reached less than a foot 

 from the surface, and steam was issuing from numerous crev- 

 ices. This w^as the site of the Lac des Palmistes, but that lake 

 was not located in the great ancient crater of Mt. Pelee.f 



*0p. cit., p. 360. 



f The photograph of the Lac des Palmistes published by Dr. Emil Deckert 

 on page 425 of the Zeitschrift der Gesellchaft fiir Erd-kunde zu Berlin 

 for 1902 shows that body of water as it appeared in the rainy season of 1898. 

 Deckert describes the lake as being but 2 meters deep and as lying in the 

 middle of a morass or swamp upon a bed of lava. He regards this as a 

 crater lake, though he mentions the fact that there is not and probably never 

 could have been any crater wall on the east and north [south] sides. The 



