SOUFEIEEE, AND ON A VISIT TO MONTAONE PELEE, IN 1902. 
421 
festations. There is no evidence that air-waves or sea-waves of any importance 
accompanied this outburst. 
Estimates of the height to which the steam cloud ascended, as seen from Kings¬ 
town, are founded on the angular distance of its apex above the horizon as compared 
with that of the mountains of known altitude behind the town. But these are falla¬ 
cious, as the steam cloud which forms part of the avalanche of dust shoots obliquely 
upwards into the air when the, dust subsides, and the steam column was not vei'tical 
above the crater, but had been projected southwards, so that as it travelled onward 
it gradually spread over the town, carrying with it the fine dust which fell there 
during the evening. 
From this time forward there is no satisfactory record of any further eruptions from 
the Soufriere till the end of August, 1902. It is true that in the local and Colonial 
papers paragraphs may be found describing violent steam discharges from the crater 
and rains of ash on the surrounding country, but as the result of careful inquiry on 
the spot we consider that these are erroneous. It was almost a fortnight after this 
before any attempt was made to ascend the mountain, or even to examine its lower 
slopes systematically. Rumbling noises were occasionally heard, hut these were 
partly due to landslips and falls of rock from the crater walls. Several trustworthy 
observers report that they saw steam gently arising from the crater, but most of the 
reports are based on nothing more than the appearance of the round-topped masses of 
cloud which drift across the mountain before the trade-wind,"^ while others are to be 
referred to outbursts of steam in the valleys, owing to the action of water in the 
streams on the hot dust filling the ravines. 
In this account of the sequence of events in the eruptions of May, 1902, we have 
relied principally on the evidence collected by ourselves from the statements of eye¬ 
witnesses, and on written accounts of the eruption given us by residents in St. Vincent, 
at the request of His Excellency the Governor of the Windward Islands. In most 
cases we were able personally to question these witnesses, and to amplify, and in some 
cases to correct, their statements in this way. It was a month after the first erup¬ 
tions before we landed in St. Vincent, and the sifting of the evidence proved to be no 
easy matter. It is astonishing how widely divergent, even in essential points, may 
be the narratives of two equally competent observers who were in the same room or 
in the same boat at the time. We are well aware that there are in this Report not a 
few statements which would be unhesitatingly contradicted by more than one jDerson 
who was in a good position to form an accurate opinion as regards the actual 
facts. Under the circumstances we have been guided in all cases by the 1:)alance 
of good evidence for or against any conclusion, but it is vain to hope that we have 
escaped errors and mis-statements. We have made little use of the newspaper 
For an instance of these untrustworthy reports and some pregnant remarks on the valueless 
character of much of the newspaper evidence, see Professor Jaggae, ‘ Popular Science Monthly,’ August, 
1902, p. 353. 
