486 
DItS. T. ANDERSON AND J. S. FLETT ON THE ElfUPTIONS OF THE 
the north of the liiviere Iloxelane, and from the anchorage in the hay. From the one 
side it seemed entirely razed, hardly one stone left upon another; from the sea it was 
possible to make ont where the streets had been by the long walls which had formed 
the frontages and were still standing. The houses were burnt out, and filled with 
blackened timber, ashes, and mud, much of which had apparently been washed down 
Ijy the rains from the slopes behind the town. These were now nearly bare, though 
a little green vegetation was again showing itself, and evidently rivers of mud had 
flowed along the streets and come to rest on the flat ground on which the city had 
been built. It was in turn being washed out of the houses by every shower, and fresh 
heaps of skeletons were in this way daily being exposed to view. 
The violence of this blast must have been terrific. Tlie prostrate walls, the twisted 
ironwork of the verandahs, the ruined cathedral, the uprooted and dismembered trees, 
all spoke eloquently of this. The cannon in the fort near the south end of the 
town had been overthrown (they stood side on to the blast). The gigantic statue of 
the Virgin, which was planted on the edge of the bluff' near the southern fort, was 
torn fi'om its pedestal. This was not in itself wonderful, as the statue was fastened 
to the pedestal onl}^ by four or five iron bolts which had given way, but it was 
marvellous to see how it had been carried 40 feet away, and lay prone with its head 
pointing directly to the crater, Near it a low, stone wall, about 18 inches thick, had 
been broken from its foundations and forced southwards for several inches. 
The conflagration, too, had left its mark. Nothing that was combustible had been 
preserved. Everything was more or less completely burnt, excej^t some unsigned 
notes, which lay in a box in the strong room of the Banque Coloniale. We were 
told that robbers had rifled the houses of everything of value, but we saw very 
little—it was difficult even to obtain a curio to remind one of the visit. The iron 
safes of the business houses were there, most of them broken open; the books they 
contained were more or less charred. Coins found in the houses and shops were 
shown us, most of them blackened, and often sticking together as if they had been 
partially fused. The shops were empty, except those which had contained china, 
glass, or iron. The china was often superficially fused, the glass in some cases melted 
into lumjDS. The iron beams of one large building were curved and twisted like 
reeds. 
From our point of view the condition of the trees was of special interest, as giving 
us data on which to base a comparison with what we had seen in St. Vincent. 
To the north of the city they had vanished, and on the south side of the Roxelane 
they were overturned—even the largest charred and sand-blasted. But on the 
extreme south end, though many had fallen, some stood, and behind the town a 
banana was putting out its oar-shaped leaves of fresh green amid the desolation of 
ashes and death. The trees in the streets may have been partially protected by the 
surrounding houses. It is not wise to push the comparison too far, but in general 
the south end of iSt. Pieri'e was in much the same condition as St. Vincent on the 
