47'J 
SOUFRIEEE, AND OX A VISIT TO MOXTAOXE PELEE, IN 190: 
to the causes which underlie the phenomena. Articles of more permanent value have 
appeared also in certain magazines and scientific periodicals, hut perhaps we are rig]it 
in saying that the geological history of that catastrophe has yet to he penned, and as 
more than one party of scientilic men have addressed themselves to the task, there 
should be available, in no great lapse of time, the results of careful and thorough 
examination of all the effects of the eruption, with a judicious and critical digest of the 
evidence of what actually took place on the fatal moining of May 8th. We are well 
aware that much of what has been published is cpiite untrustworthy, and unsuited for 
scientific discussion, and we will rely mostly on the results of our own observation, 
and on information given us by Professor Lacroix and Professor Jaggar, but we 
have also made more or less use of the articles whicli have appeared in the newspapers 
of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Barbados, Trinidad, and in the English journals, and ol 
the reports by Professor R. T. Hill and Professor Israel Russell to the National 
Geographic Society of the United States, and their articles in the ‘ Century 
Magazine.’ * 
The resemblance betAveen Pelee and the Soufriere in their geological relationships 
is so striking that it cannot fail to impress the most casual observer. Each stands at 
the northern end of its respective island, an isolated volcanic cone, bearing a summit 
crater or craters, and with its skirts descending to the sea on all sides except the 
south. Here in each case there is a broad, fiat depression, more marked in 
St. Vincent than in Martinique, on the south side of Avhich rises another volcano, or 
group of volcanoes, extinct, highly eroded, hut still hearing in its internal structure, 
and less obviously in its external configuration, the proofs of its origin. The Piton de 
Carhet, which lies to the south of Pelee, has not been in eruption since the European 
colonisation of Martinique; but its cratei', though partly destroyed, is not yet 
completely effaced by erosion, and like its analogue, the Morne Garu at St. Vincent, 
it seems to have been the last volcano in the island wdiich has died out and become 
extinct. 
In both islands the older volcanic piles lie in the soutli end, which consists mainly 
of lavas and agglomerates emitted Ifom foci which liave long since passed into inpose. 
The lavas am andesitic, and alternate with vast sheets of coarse agglomerate, 
wdiich testify to the frequency and violence with which explosive action took place 
A\Ren activity was at its maximum along the Caribbean chain. The epeirogenetic 
movements which have affected this border lidge betw^een two oceans have left their 
marks in the raised beaches which are found along the shores of both islands, and the 
same conditions of accumulation and uplift, with intense and mpid eiosion on stee}) 
slopes attacked by troiiical climates and tropical rainfall, have in each case resulted in 
deep sculpturing by the agencies of subaerial denudation. The ravines of Pelee have 
* R. T. Hill, “A Study of Pelee,” ‘Century Magazine,’ September, 1902, vol. Ixiv., 761. 
IsiiAEL C. Russell, “ Pheses of tlie AVest Tndian Eruptions,” ‘Century Magazine',’ September, 1902, 
vol. Ixiv., p. 786. 
