ST. VINCENT IN 1902, AND ON A VISIT TO MONTAGNE PELEE. 
295 
“ I have made many visits to the Soufriere since the occasion mentioned above. 
The hole in the centre of the new deposit has gradually widened, and, I suppose, will 
ultimately take up the whole width of the bottom of the crater. Conditions are 
rapidly becoming normal, and in a few years’ time the mountain will once again be 
covered with verdure and beauty.” 
Mr. Powell # reports, on March 24, that the depth of black dust was about half an 
inch at Park Hill. At Three Pivers and Mount William it was about three-quarters 
of an inch deep and coarser in grain. It contained many considerable pieces of an 
inch and upwards in size. The cocoa trees were here a good deal damaged. At the 
experiment station, near Georgetown, it was coarser still, more cinder-like, and pieces 
of 3 inches or more in diameter were common. The sugar-canes and other plants 
were much injured. At Dickson’s Village, which is in an exposed position above 
Georgetown, the ash was 2 to 3 inches deep and larger cinders more abundant 
still. From Georgetown northward the country “ presented one blackened waste.” 
At Turema, about 5 inches of dust were measured. On the whole, there appears 
to have been a light fall of dust over all the island south of Georgetown and 
Chateau Belair, a moderate fall on the leeward coast north of this, except in the 
Larikai ravine, where there was a deposit, in places, 20 feet thick ; and a fairly 
uniform layer of a few inches thick over the Carib country, north of Georgetown. 
The heat-absorbing properties of the last fall were considered to render it more 
detrimental than the deposits of the former eruptions. 
The dust was carried by the wind to Barbados. On Sunday, the morning was 
clear till about nine, when a dense black cloud came rolling up from the west, the surface 
wind being easterly at the time. Dust began to fall about 11.15 and it continued 
to do so more or less heavily up to about 1 o’clock, after which it slackened and 
ceased altogether at 5 o’clock. When the gloom was deepest, the day was darker 
than on either of the previous occasions of a fall, viz., the 7th of May and the 16th of 
October, 1902. During the midday service lamps were lighted in the various places 
of worship. The dust appears to have taken about two hours in traversing the 
distance of 111 miles. The amount as estimated by Mr. Lewton Brain and Mr. 
R. D. Anstead, of the Imperial Department of Agriculture, from observations made 
at Bay Mansion, was 2^ tons to the acre. It will be remembered that the total fall 
on May the 7th was 17 '58 tons per acre, and that on October 16 about 3*92 tons 
per acre. The cloud appeared to be denser towards the north, and at Codrington 
House, two miles to the north of Bridgetown, the fall was 6’52 tons per acre.t Since 
this eruption the crater has been practically quiescent. 
* Curator to the Commissioner of Agriculture, 
t ‘ Agricultural News,’ March 28, 1903, No. 25. 
