452 
I)RS. T. ANDERSOX AXi) J. S. FLETT OX THE ERURTIOXS OF THE 
anotliei' is the great weight of sand and dust which was kept in susjDension l)y the 
gases, still another the cooling by expansion of the steam and by contact with the cold 
surface of the ground, but these will be discussed more fully when we have considered 
also the evidence afforded by the eruptions of Pelee. 
The area over which the hot blast spread was enormously greater than that 
traversed by the avalanche. The latter poured down the south side of the hill, and 
along the streams that drain these slopes, hut the blast covered the whole hillside 
and ascended the shoulders of Morne Garu. The trees were broken down on all the 
higher parts of the mountain, tliougii least on the northern side and above Fancy 
and Owia. From Point Espagnol to Langley Pai'k the whole upper part of the Carih 
Country, and the ridges and spurs higher up, were ruined by the blast, the timber 
for the most part fallen, and the prostrate trunks pointin gout ward from the crater 
and down the deep radial valleys. This is true also of the leeward side from Windsor 
Forest to Richmond Estate. 
In short, the effects of the hot blast were shown by all the area over which the 
great black cloud had swept in the first part of its course, and the correspondence 
between the region of broken foi-est and the country covered by the black cloud 
before it reached the lower irroimds is too close to be accidental. When the dust in 
o 
the cloud was hot and when the velocity of the gases w'as still very great, the forest 
had been cut down and the wood charred, eroded and destroyed. When the hot 
sand had cooled and was subsiding, the liot blast effects diminished and filially dis¬ 
appeared, though still the cloud of dust and asphyxiating gases crept along the 
ground, and where it passed over the estates on the windward shore, though no longer 
able to cut down or overturn the trees and structures in its path, brought injury or 
death to their living occupants. To those who saw it from outside it was a black 
cloud, or even a purplish and reddish cloud, hut those who were overtaken by it felt 
it a hot blast laden witii sand and dust. This was near the shore, or on the sea ; 
()nly there did anv who were caim-ht survive. No one in St. Vincent was in the region 
of its fiercest energy, lint in the city of St. Pierre a similar blast wrought desolation 
with a completeness and a murderous violence which are now a matter of histoiy. 
But the blast is not merely a phase of the great lilack cloud, it has also a very 
close relationship to the avalanche of sand. In it the gases greatly preponderated : 
it liad a mol)ility, a power of surmounting ol)stacles, a tendency to spread laterally 
which the avalanche does not seem to have possessed. We may say that the hot 
blast coursed over the ground like a current of heavy gas; the avalanche I'esembled a 
viscous heavy fluid. The blast which swept down into the valleys at the south side 
of the Soufiiei'e was too heavy to climb vertically the steep face of the Morne Garu. 
It sjilit into two parts, one of whicli ascended obliquely over each shoulder of the 
mountain, mowing down the forest and sti'ewing the trunks of the trees before it in 
such a way as to mark the direction of its path. The avalanche, on the other hand, 
when it reached these valleys turned almost at a right angle to its previous course and 
