268 
RECENT VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 
clay, or probably much less, the whole of the vegetation on this part 
of the mountain was utterly devastated, and the valleys were filled up 
with a deep new deposit of incandescent sand. This was the first and 
most obvious geographical alteration. 
When we arrived on the scene a month later, secondary changes 
had taken place to a very marked extent. The wet season had set in in 
earnest, and as much as 5 inches of rain had been registered in one period 
of twenty-four hours. Denudation was taking place on a prodigious 
scale. The surface was everywhere scored with rain-furrows, which 
joined together in a sort of feather-pattern into larger streams, which 
had cut deep channels into the soft material; and these again united 
to form rivers, which in some cases had re-excavated the old channels, 
but in others had cut new and quite independent ones. The amount 
of denudation that had been accomplished in this short space of time 
seemed incredible to one accustomed to the leisurely rate of change in 
temperate climates. The Wallibu had excavated a new bed in the hot 
ash nearly 80 feet deep, and had left in places as many as five or six 
terraces to mark successive stages of its excavation, and the Eabaka 
on the east side had cut a corresponding gorge. Nor were the changes 
yet complete; we were fortunate in seeing them still in progress, and 
obtaining photographs of many of the most striking phenomena. When 
the weather was fine little change was to be seen, though the ash was 
still smoking, and hot enough in places even on the surface to burn 
the bare feet of our porters. Most of the river-beds were then also dry, 
but a brisk shower of rain changed all this. The water came down the 
river in torrents and undermined the steep banks. This started land¬ 
slides of hot ash, which fell into the river, and explosions of steam on an 
enormous scale took place. Showers of hot mud were thrown up to 
a height of perhaps 150 feet like great geysirs, and great clouds of 
steam, laden with brown dust, rose to a height of many hundred feet, 
and were carried a wav to sea by the trade-winds. Nor was this all: 
the fallen ashes often dammed the streams, and when the water at last 
overcame the obstruction it descended no longer as water, but as a 
gush of boiling-hot mud, which made the river-bed temporarily im¬ 
passable, and built up alluvial fans at the mouth of the river. One 
day when we ascended the Soufriere, we crossed dry river-beds without 
difficulty in the morning when the weather was fine, but on returning 
in the afternoon, heavy rains having fallen in the mean time, a small 
river was full of boiling mud, and we were only able to cross it by the 
aid of a bridge which our men constructed of trees killed by the 
eruption, and this we saw carried away by a great gush of boiling 
mud soon after we had got over. 
The spots from which these explosions had taken place, when 
sufficiently cooled to be approached safely, were also interesting. They 
formed bowls or funnels from perhaps 10 feet to 30 feet in diameter, 
