SOUFEIERE, AND ON A VISIT TO MONTAONE PELEE, IN 1902. 
417 
From Chateaubelair several parties made a voyage up along the coast in boats, and 
some landed to examine the burnt-out plantations of Wallibu and Richmond. What 
chiefly attracted attention was the alteration in the configuration of the surface and 
in the outlines of the coast. The villages of Morne Ronde and Wallibu had dis- 
O 
appeared, and the sea had encroached on the land for a width of about 200 yards at 
the mouth of the Wallibu stream and for a distance of nearly a mile along the coast 
to the north of this. The buildings of Richmond Plantation and of Wallibu were 
surrounded by ashes several feet deep. Ptichmond had been on Are, and all the 
woodwork of the houses and the furniture was destroyed, but at Wallibu the barrels 
in the store, the doors, carts, and furniture were still preserved, though covered witli 
black sand. Some consider that the sand-blast was not hot enough when it passed 
over Richmond to set fire to combustible substances, but that the house was struck 
by lightning or that a paraffin lamp, which was left burning in one of the rooms, 
exploded and ignited the furniture. Mr. McDonald notes that Richmond Village 
which stood below the plantation house, was seen to be “ covered with 30 or 40 feet 
of ashes, more or less,” and that “ the general level of all the flat land as far as 
Frazer’s was raised by 40 or 50 feet, and terminated in abrupt almost vertical bluffs 
at the sea.” 
At this time the Wallibu stream was perfectly dry and choked with sand, which 
filled it up almost level across. It was not till seven or eight days had elapsed after 
the eruption that the water was again seen to make its way to the sea. Frequent 
discharges of steam were observed in the upper parts of its course. The other valleys 
which lie to the north of this, the Wallibu Dry River, Rozeau Dry River, and Larikai, 
were similarly encumbered with deposits of sand, though perhaps not to an equally 
great extent, and in these also steam explosions took place after rains. 
Very interesting and valuable evidence regarding the conditions prevailing at 
Wallibu and Richmond about this time is afforded by certain photographs, taken by 
Mr. Wilson, of Kingstown, on the 14th May.* One of them shows the houses of 
Richmond disroofed and burnt out, surrounded by several feet of ash and mud, out 
of which rise the leafless, blasted stems of trees. The wooden framework on which 
the plantation bell was supported is preserved unburnt. This makes it likely that 
the fire which attacked the houses was the result of an accident and not a direct 
consequence of the heat of the volcanic blast. On the slopes across the stream which 
flows by the south of Richmond, the layer of ashes had been thin, and the rain- 
showers acting on the naked unprotected surface of the mud have cut little furrows 
and runnels in it. In the foreground of the jiicture the sheet of ash around the 
plantation-houses had a smooth, slightly hummocky or rolling character, exactly 
resembling the effect produced by a considerable fall of snow, or the surface of fine 
* These photographs are reproduced in Mr. E. O. Hovey’s paper, “ Martinique and St. Vincent: a 
Preliminary Report upon the Eruptions of 1902,” ‘Bull. Amer. Museum Nat. Hist.,’ vol. 16, 
Article 26, Plates 41 and 38. 
3 H 
VOL. CC. —A. 
