St. Vincent, and 31 1. Pelee, llartinique. 347 



the eruption took place. The flood of May 8 was the most 

 violent and was three meters (about 10 feet) deep where the 

 valley of the river opens onto the sea coast, according to M. 

 Delsol Desire, the mayor's deputy of G-rande Riviere. He 

 gave me the foregoing particulars in regard to these floods. 

 The fine mud of these flows entered the buildings on the banks 

 of the river as if it had been thick syrup. In one room that 

 we examined the line of highest level was even with the top 

 of an ordinary table, which would show that the mud was 30 

 inches deep in the room. At the time of our visit the deposit 

 was nearly dry and it showed a shrinkage of but eight inches 

 or 27 per cent. In another room the shrinkage was greater, 

 showing that the mud there was thinner when it flowed in. 

 Streams composed of such material as this would have great 

 power in the transportation of bowlders. The sizes of the 

 bowlders brought down by the mud-torrents and deposited on 

 the flood plain of the stream above the village and in its old 

 channel may be inferred from figure 18. Some of those meas- 

 ured were eight feet across. The bowlders seem to be from 

 old deposits, since they have weathered surfaces. They show 

 fresh abrasion along edges and at corners, due to their recent 

 trip down the gorge. The mud is made up of gray material 

 from the present eruption, together with a large proportion of 

 yellow sand from the old beds through which the river runs. 

 The vast amount of material brought down by the torrents has 

 extended the delta plain fully five hundred feet into the sea 

 and has pushed out the shore-line for several hundred yards on 

 either side of the mouth of the river. 



At Basse Pointe the history in regard to floods or torrents of 

 mud has been similar. The principal disasters occurred on 

 May 8 and 27, but the latter was the greater and most of the 

 destruction was wrought on that occasion. Here too the deltal 

 plain has encroached five hundred or six hundred feet on the 

 sea and the ocean currents have spread the surplus material as 

 a new beach for a long distance north and south of the mouth 

 of the river, destroying the little artificial harbor of the town. 

 Bowlders ten feet across were brought down and left in the 

 town by the floods, and a deposit of sand, gravel and bowlders 

 fifteen to eighteen feet deep rests upon the site of the old 

 market place, which was at the mouth of the river. 



The ruins of the city of St. Pierre presented a very interest- 

 ing field of study, but mostly in the line of speculations as to 

 the cause or causes of the terrible destruction of human life. 

 The walls of the houses (see fig. 11) showed that one or 

 more blasts of tornadic violence had swept over the city and 

 that they came from the direction of the crater of Pelee, for 

 the east and west walls — transverse to the direction of the 



