344 E. O. Hovey— Eruptions of 1902 of La Soufriere, 



had been formed ;vithin the eruption clond through the con- 

 densation of its moisture. This mud formed a tenacious coat- 

 ing over everything with which it came in contact. That 

 drops of mud, too, formed in the air and fell as a feature of the 

 eruption is proven by the condition of the walls of the houses 

 in Precheur, on which I found flattened spheroids of dried 

 mud which could have formed only in the manner indicated. 

 These flecks of mud were two, four and even six inches across, 

 where two or more had coalesced. They occurred mostly on 

 the northern and eastern walls of the houses. The testimony 

 of the people as to the occurrence of rain during the great 

 eruptions is conflicting, but the existence of this coating and 

 these drops of mud proves that much aerial condensation of 

 steam accompanied the outbursts. 



During the latter part of our stay on the crater rim on June 

 24 the rain fell in torrents, and the deluge continued until we 

 reached the foot of the outer cone on our return journey, the 

 heaviest portion of the storm lasting for an hour or an hour 

 and a half. Here we found the fumaroles sending out more 

 steam than they did on our upward journey. When we crossed 

 the Seche River, we found a foot and a half of yellow, muddy 

 water in place of the two or three inches which we had noticed 

 there in the morning. We had not climbed out of the lowest 

 gorge of the river before our attention was attracted by the 

 heavy eruption that was taking place from the crater, and that 

 was sending enormous clouds of dust-laden steam down the 

 gorge of the Blanche to a point below the so-called Soufriere 

 crater. Thunder-like noises nearer at hand had already made 

 themselves heard and in another minute a wall of hot water, 

 ten or fifteen feet high, swept with railroad speed over the place 

 where we had crossed the river, and rushed on to the sea. The 

 roar of the torrent was like that of a train, and the water dash- 

 ing from side to side of the narrow gorge caused the ground 

 on which we were standing to tremble like a ship when her 

 propeller "races." The water was thick and as black as ink 

 with its load of volcanic ash, and it transported wdth ease bowl- 

 ders five feet in diameter which it had excavated from its 

 banks. In many, if not most instances, these bowlders were the 

 ejecta of the present eruption. To the left a stream of thick, 

 yellowish mud was flowing down from the plateau of the 

 Seche-Blanche which we had left a quarter of an hour before 

 and was cascading into the Seche directly beneath us. Soon 

 the black torrent cut into the ash-beds along its banks suffi- 

 ciently to reach their still highly heated interiors and cause 

 columns of steam to shoot hundreds of feet into the air. The 

 steam columns carried great clouds of black and light-brown 

 volcanic sand scores of feet upward. The hot area of the 



