34:2 E. 0. Hovey— Eruptions of 1902 of La Souf 



nere 



The history of the present series of eruptions may be epito- 

 mized somewhat as follows : the gradually returning activity 

 of the volcano began to make itself very manifest in the latter 

 part of April, since visitors to the crater found warm water in 

 the basin of the Etang Sec on the 25th of that month, and the 

 lake was deep. Columns of dust-laden steam rose from an 

 opening within the old crater on the east side of the fitang 

 Sec and from one on the west side of the same basin, and 

 cones rose about these openings. Water in large quantity 

 collected in the old lake basin, assisted, perhaps, by a dam 

 formed across the gorge by the ejecta from the western crater. 

 The water was heated by the action of volcanic forces. On 

 May 5 the heated waters of the crater broke through this dam 

 and rushed, as a deluge of mud and bowlders of all sizes, down 

 the gorge of the Ili%nere Blanche, and overwhelmed the 

 Guerin sugar factory, which was situated at the mouth of the 

 stream. On May 8 began the series of great explosions which 

 have sent steam, laden with sulphurous gases, dust, ashes and 

 stones, again and again over the southwest slope of the 

 mountain with the violence of a tornado, several times reach- 

 ing to St. Pierre and beyond. The author would explain the 

 blasts in the same way as in the case of St. Yincent (see p. 

 326), but the great gash in the side of the crater of Pelee and 

 the position of the neighboring ridges concentrated the force 

 of the explosions in a certain direction and along a compar- 

 atively narrow zone — and the city of St. Pierre with its 26,000 

 inhabitants* and thousands of refugees lay in an amphitheatre, 

 a regular cul-de-sac^ directly in the path of the blasts. 



There seems to be no crater or center of primary eruption 

 in the gorge of the Blanche below the great crater, or in the 

 gorge of the Seche,t but there has been much secondary 



and neighboring cliffs witli reference to the rent on the western side of the 

 £tang Sec. which, Avas the most active center of eruption in Mar, June and 

 Jul}", directed the blasts of the earlier eruptions toward St. Pierre and awaj 

 from Morne Rouge. That directive factor having ceased to have^ force, 

 through the growth of the inner cone and the (apparent) shifting of the 

 center of activity to the eastern vent, Morne Eouge, a mile and a half nearer 

 the crater than the middle of St. Pierre, came far within the area of destruc- 

 tion and received the full fury of an eruption. 



* Population in 1895, 25,382, according to the Century Atlas. 



f Prof. Angelo Heilprin has stated in his article in McClure's Magazine 

 for August, 1902, and elsewhere, that eruptions have taken place from a 

 crater located in the gorge of the Riviere Blanche some distance below the 

 great crater. R. T. Hill has expressed the same idea in his extended article 

 in the National Gaographic Magazine (vol. xiii, pp. 251, 261) for July, 

 1902, and speaks of this as the center from which came the blast that 

 destroyed St. Pierre, calling it the " Soufriere crater."' He has recorded the 

 matter on a map which was published on p. 260 of the National Geogra- 

 phic Magazine. Curtis was with Hill when the latter made the observa- 

 tions on which this map was based, and therefore knew the spot intended to 

 be represented. Curtis and I stood on the brink of the gorge of the Blanche 

 overlooking it on June 24, examined it again with field glasses from the rim 



