44-2 
DRS. T. ANDERSON AND J. S. FLETT ON THE ERUPTIONS OF THE 
Possibly the original thickness had been twice or thrice as great. The terracing of 
these deposits was often very fine, and in other places subsidences and landslides had 
taken place, and the surface of the ash was fissured, broken, and highly huegular. 
Great stones, 12 feet across and more, lay in this ash, whether ejected during this 
eruption or fallen from the old agglomerates in the clifts, we could not say. 
On the knife-edges of the spurs the new mass still lay, firm, coherent, forming an 
excellent joathway, so smooth that one might have thought it had been prepared 
expressly for the foot (see Plate 35). When the sun shone after heavy rain, the 
smooth, narrow, winding strips of fine wet ash on these ridges refiected the light, 
and they seemed like lines of silver traced on the dark-grey background of the hill. On 
them the rain had little power of erosion, as they formed, in fact, the 02 ily tracts of level 
ground on the wdiole mountain. The fine dust was washed aw^ay, and the coarser sand 
exposed Ijy the beat of the raindrops. They were, as a rule, from 2 to 5 feet wide; 
laterally, as the slope increased, little rivulets formed, at first so small that they had 
almost no cutting powei', and on each side of the smooth central line there was a strip 
fiuted with little furrows. This passed in turn into the sculptured rill-marked 
surfaces of the sides of the valleys. The division line between these surfaces was 
wonderfully sharp, for as each channel deepened it pushed its head upwards, and the 
steep upper parts of the erosion curves produced little rapid descents, by which one 
type of surface graded into another. 
At heights above 2500 feet the gradient of the path became somewhat steeper, 
and as the surface here was covered wdth 5 feet or more of fine ash, wdiich when wet 
became a pasty mud, it was more toilsome to climb this slope than any of the lower- 
parts of the hill. The foot sank deejrly in the soft, wet ash, which was furrowed 
with shallow I'ain grooves, some three or four feet deep, the edges of which slipped 
away wdien we endeavoured to cross them. The deep radial valleys which trench the 
liill sides gradually pass into shallow, wide depressions when traced up to this level, 
and the oft-quoted comparison of an eroded volcanic cone to be a partially opened 
umlrrella, was very applicable to the Soufriere. The greater steepness of the rrpper 
slopes showed also that the mourrtairr possesses the ty^rical profile of ash corres, 
thoirgh this was by rro rrrearrs very eviderrt irr a distarrt view owirrg to the great 
erosion, which prodrrced an appeararrce of rugged irregirlarity. 
This ash on the summit of the cone was mostly a firre black powder, srrrellirrg 
strongly of sulphuretted hydrogerr, brrt irr it tliere was a very large rrrrrrrber of ejected 
irlocks arrd bonrbs, irrairy of them on the surface, but apparerrtly still rrrore were 
embedded irr its mass, as if the last rrrater-ial to gather oir the slopes had corrtairred 
proportionately fewer of the coarse ingredients. The ejected blocks were ofterr foirr 
or five feet irr diameter, and the sporrgy arrdesitic borrrbs not seldom two or three feet. 
Marry of these last seemed to have beerr hot arrd plastic wherr they fell and to have 
stuck together, or, at arry rate, the later had rrroulded therrrselves orr the sirrfaces of 
the earlier. Tlioiruh the fr-anmerrts of the old lavas arrd ash beds which had been 
