SOUFKIERE, AND ON A VISIT TO MONTAGNE PELEE, IN 1902. 
393 
a strong' breeze, though, being under the shelter of a high spur of land, they did not 
feel it much. Still it came over the water with a strong ripple and a hissing sound, 
due to the hot sand falling into the sea and making it steam. In a moment it was 
pitch dark and intensely hot and stifling. The cloud was highly sulphurous, and 
this irritated their throats and nostrils, making them cough. The heat was terrible 
and the suffocating feeling very painful. They threw themselves into the sea to 
escape burning by the hot sand. It does not appear that the surface of the water 
was boiling as it was in some other cases. They all dived, and when they returned 
to the surface the air was still unfit to breathe and the heat intense. So they 
continued to dive rej^eatedh', but when they came up again the air was almost as 
l)ad as before. How long this lasted they cannot tell, but they thought it might have 
been several minutes. At last they were all utterly exhausted and could have held 
out no longer; then they felt the air clearing, the heat diminished, though still very 
great, and they clung to the boat for a few minutes before they were able to get into 
it again. 
One man was not so good a swimmer as the others, and his strength was soon 
exhausted. He field on to the o-unwale of the boat and took the risk of burninsf 
rather than of drowning. He described tons the insufferable lieat and the sulphurous 
smell, and he was rapidly hecoming unconscious when the air cleared. The sea around 
was hissing, and it was so dark tliat two men hanging on to the boat, side by side, could 
not see one anotlier, even thougli they coidd touch. There was a continuous loud noise, 
but a person speaking in an ordinary tone of voice could easily make himself heard. 
This is a curious fact, for the report of this explosion v'as heard at Barbados. But 
Mr. McDoxald confirms the statement. He noticed particularly that when he 
gave orders to his men to launch the boat and leave the shore, he did not require 
to exert liimself in the least to make them hear him. 
While this man remained clinging to tlie gunwale the hot sand rained upon 
him. His woolly head was wet and the sand, Avas cooled by contact with it, but 
it gathered above tlie lobes of his ears, and there the heat Avas sufficient to dry 
his skin and produce painful burns. He told us that AAffien tlie cloud had 
passed there aaus enough sand on his scalp to fill his hat tAvice over (the hat AAns 
an ordinary lound straA\' AA'ith flat brim). It formed a- layer 2 or 3 indies deep. 
The ash fell dry, there aaws no rain and no scalding mud. When they got back 
into the boat they found it nearly filled Avith fine ash and stones, and these AA^ere so 
hot that had the boat not been leaky and partly tilled Avith AA'ater it might have 
taken tire. Yet these men Avere only in the outer edge of the cloud. A feAV 
hundred yards further north tliis cloud de})oslted in some places 40 feet of red- 
hot sand in a feAv minutes. It Avas for this reason also tliat they experienced no 
great shock Avhen the cloud struck them, and did not feel it pass like a strong 
blast, for Mr. McDonald states, a cloud came down Avith a liigh A'elocity. His 
boat was going at perhaps 8 or 10 miles an hour, impelled by the frantic exertions 
A'OL. CO.—A. 3 E 
