On the Eruptions of the Soufrtire and Mont FeUe. 431 



lustrous and glassy when broken across. Some were seen at Wallibu 

 (4 miles from the crater) 3 feet in diameter. The ejected blocks 

 consist of weathered andesites and andesitic tuffs such as can be seen 

 in the walls of the crater. They are very numerous, and some are 

 over 5 feet across. In addition to these, fine-grained dark-green 

 banded rocks occur, which appear to be baked and indurated sedi- 

 ments, probably the mud from the bottom of the crater lake, or the 

 finer beds -intercalated in the older volcanic series. Another type of 

 ejected block which is very common in some parts of the hill is a 

 coarse-grained aggregate of felspar, hornblende (brown under the 

 microscope), and perhaps olivine. It is not vesicular and contains 

 little or no glass, being apparently holocrystalline. These rocks are 

 very friable, and the crystals are loosely aggregated together. They 

 seemed to us to be comparable to the sanidinites of the Eifel and 

 many other modern volcanic districts. They are certainly quite unlike 

 true plutonic diorites, both in their structure and in ; the character of 

 their minerals. 



It may be noted that none of these rocks are characteristic of this 

 eruption, but all can be found among the older materials of the hill. 

 The hardened, baked sediments were well known to the Caribs, who 

 have long used them for the manufacture of their finer stone imple- 

 ments. The felspar-hornblende blocks were found by us among the 

 older rocks, and in some places even as rounded masses enveloped in 

 the old lavas. Some of the fresher bombs in the river beds and on the 

 seashore can hardly be distinguished from those which were the product 

 of this eruption, though undoubtedly of much older date. 



At Kingstown, as in Barbados, the deposit of volcanic dust and sand 

 was so slight that, owing to the heavy tropical rains, and the rapid 

 growth of tropical vegetation, it readily disappeared, and when we 

 arrived it was necessary to make careful search to find traces of it. In 

 St. Yincent, to the south of Chateaubelair, on the leeward side, and 

 from 2 miles south of Georgetown, on the windward side, the country 

 had very much its normal appearance. To the north of these points, 

 however, a sheet of volcanic ejecta covered the ground. Where it was 

 thin it was rapidly disappearing. Every shower washed much of the 

 finer matter into the streams, which were flowing full of sand and 

 lapilli to the sea. In the fields the arrowroot was pushing up through 

 the layer of ash, and covering it with a mantle of green leaves. 

 Around Georgetown the deposit is from 1 to 3 feet deep, and some of 

 the blocks are a foot in diameter. On some of the sugar-cane fields in 

 the Carib country the ash lies 4 feet deep, while on the higher 

 slopes of the hill it is from 5 feet to over 12 feet (where it has gathered 

 in the hollows). On the leeward side the ash is very deep in the 

 valleys of the Wallibu and Rozeau Dry Rivers, but north of Larikai it 

 is much thinner, not above a foot or two. The north side of the 



