St. Vi7icent, and Mt. PelSe^ Martinic[ue. 349 



lines of "fire" due to the rolling and sliding red-hot rocks and 

 iapilli, and this light was reflected from the steam clouds above 

 the cone. The existence of notable quantities of burning or 

 inflammable gases in the discharges from the volcano seems to 

 me to be as yet undemonstrated. 



On two occasions, June 24 and 26, 1 went into the crater for 

 a short distance beside the southwestern gash and several times 

 was surrounded with heavy clouds of steam from within the 

 abyss. The steam, which was warm, but not hot, when it 

 reached me, contained much sulphur dioxide, SO^, and at 

 times some hydrogen sulphide, H^S, but I could not detect the 

 odor of any other gas. The sulphur gases made the atmos- 

 phere difficult to breathe, but the most uncomfortable sensation 

 was due to the irritation caused by the fine, angular dust get- 

 ting into the respiratory passages and the eyes. Such a mix- 

 ture, raised to a high temperature, and containing a large 

 amount of dust and a considerable percentage of sulphur gases, 

 would be almost instantaneously fatal to life. It was a cloud 

 like this that rolled over and enveloped St. Pierre for several 

 minutes about eight o'clock in the morning of May 8, and 

 must have caused most of the deaths. Some of the other 

 causes of death were, (I) blows from falling stones which had 

 been hurled out from the volcano, (2) crushing beneath falling 

 walls and various objects (one man was found with his back 

 broken by a sign which had fallen from over a store front), (3) 

 burns due to hot stones and dust, (4) burns caused by steam 

 alone and (5) by steam mingled with dust, (6) cremation in 

 burning buildings, (7) nervous shock, (8) suffocation from lack 

 of respirable air and, perhaps, (9) lightning. No autopsy was 

 made on any of the thousands of victims of the disaster on 

 Martinique, although men capable of performing such opera- 

 tions had the opportunity of making them within a very few 

 hours after the eruption ; hence there is no sure way of deter- 

 mining whether poisonous gases other than those mentioned 

 played any part in the destruction of life. Immanuel Ledee, 

 one of the survivors of the crew of the Koraima, told me 

 that when the mucous membrane of his mouth, throat and 

 nose sloughed off on account of the burning, it was found to 

 be full of the fine black (gray) dust. He was taken to the 

 hospital at Fort de France after the eruption. Samson Cil- 

 Barice,^ the prisoner who is the sole survivor of the persons 

 within St. Pierre at the time of the eruption, told me in 

 Morne Rouge on June 18 that it was the hot dry "sand" 

 which sifted in through the window of his cell that caused 

 his terrible burns. 



* This name is spelled very differently in the various accounts of the dis- 

 aster. The spelling here adopted is that given me by my interpreter. 



