ST. VINCENT IN 1902, AND ON A VISIT TO MONTAGNE PELEE. 
301 
expected to attain their greatest speed. The whole rock is scored and grooved in 
a way recalling glacial scratches, but I have scarcely ever seen any due to that cause 
so well marked. These scratches, I since find, have been noticed by Lacroix and 
Hovey in other parts of the valley. # The rock is a tuff containing many blocks of 
very hard andesite, so many that it might almost be called an agglomerate. The 
body of the tuff itself, on the contrary, in which the blocks are embedded though 
tenacious is soft enough to be cut with a knife, yet the hard stones have been planed 
off level with the rest of the mass. Nothing could show more vividly the amount of 
force applied, and the suddenness of its application. 
Owing to the cause previously mentioned very few of the upper valleys received 
any hot ash, but any which did so present a most striking similarity to those in 
St. Vincent. Thus a photograph of the upper Rozeau valley in St. Vincent is 
practically indistinguishable from one of the upper Falaise in Martinique. Both 
were deeply filled with hot ash in the early stages of the eruption, in which explosions 
were seen to take place that were supposed to proceed from parasitic craters. In both 
cases what we see are not really true craters, but merely examples of places where 
secondary steam explosions took place in the hot ash as previously so often mentioned 
in the Wallibu district. In Martinique the rains, associated with the eruption, swept 
down such quantities of coarse debris as to form a delta in a few hours (Plate 25, 
4 
The Return of Vegetation .—Vegetation has returned in a manner and to an extent 
strikingly similar to what has taken place in St. Vincent. Thus, at a height of 
1500 feet, on the east side of the mountain, where the ascent is usually made from 
Vive, practically all the trees are killed and their trunks remain as bare stumps, 
while a luxuriant vegetation is growing up chiefly from the old roots (Plate 24). 
Large sheets of ferns are particularly noticeable. The ferns extend considerably 
higher, viz., to about 2000 feet, where they give way to grasses, while towards the 
summit only a few mosses and lichens are found. The slopes above Morne Rouge, as 
far as could be observed from the road, were in a similar condition. At Morne Rouge 
village the deserted gardens are full of luxuriant tropical growth, so full that most of 
the gates cannot be opened ; partly no doubt in consequence of being embedded in 
• ash, but principally owing to the new plants, which have grown up since the place 
has been left to run wild. 
At St. Pierre the principal street, along which is one of the chief roads in this part 
, of the island, has been cleared of ash and debris. The ruins of the houses on each 
side are still embedded in ash and covered by a dense jungle of tropical vegetation. 
The valley of the Riviere Blanche and the district between it and St. Pierre is the 
only part which is still bare of vegetation, and this is no doubt due to the passage 
down it of the repeated “ nuees ardentes.” 
* Lacroix, p. 217 ; Hovey, ‘ Preliminary Report,’ p. 3G3. 
