OCR Text |
Show VOLCANIC ERUPTION DESCRIBED Oswald Crawford Tells of a Volcanic Erup-tion Erup-tion Which He Witnessed in 1903 V Distinguished Party Go to St. Piere Martinique Mar-tinique on an Excursion Permitted to See the Ill-fated City Pelee as Seen From the Deck of the Esk High Pressure Pres-sure Steam Issuing From the Crater-After Crater-After Landing Fatal Forebodings Announced An-nounced When Signalled to Return to' the Esk, the Mountain Roared and Belched Forth Incandescent Sand, Ashes, Scoria-and Burning Rocks Fused Together Their Effects on Land and Sea The Cloud Explosion Rang Bells 90 Miles Away Consternation Among the Excursionists Providentially Saved (Special Cor. Intermountain Catholic.) ' (Copyrighted.) I ;-co by the Xew York papers, which I received' this morning,, that the Puyehue volcano in Vai-! divia, Chile, is again in violent eruption. The dis patch adds that the explosions were preceded by awful, aw-ful, subterranean rumblings and intense darkness, and accompanied by electrical displays, showers ot ashes and boiling water. The flowing lava has invaded in-vaded the surrounding forests aud the inhabitants are fleeing in terror. Allow me to break the order and continuity of my weekly letters to The Intermountain Inter-mountain Catholic by mailing to you the record of my visit to St. Pierre. Island of Martinique, on the 25th. of January, l0.o,. On August CO. 1903. Morne Rouge, the Newport of Martinique, situated on u commanding eminence four miles southwest of St. Pierre, was destroyed by an explosion of the Peleo greater in its intensity and terrific detonation- than that which obliterated the doomed city and its' thirty thousand people. The explosion which I witnessed wit-nessed on Sunday afternoon, January 2,, 190;, was equal in its intensity, according to Professor, Lacroix, then at Fort de France, Martinique, to the August eruption. I was now about to pay my second visit to St. Pierre since the fatal morning of May 8, 1902. the morning of the human sacrifice. I happened to be a visitor on the Island of St. Lucia, Lu-cia, West Indies, when the blockade of the Venezuelan Venezue-lan ports by the German fleet threw one of the boat- of the Boyal Mail company tempe-arily out ot" commission. The manager of the West India end of the line, hoping to pick tip a few "nimble six-; pences," advertised an excursion from the Island of St. Vincent to Martinique by the Royal Mail steamship (R. M. S.) Esk, which was the boat then otf her Toute. They wired us at St. Lucia to know how many of our people wouid accompany them, and we answered to book us for 1"0. At 6:() on j Sunday morning the Esk. Captain Xewton on the bridge, tied up to her snubbing posts on the north wharf, having on board 200 Vincentians, and the Police band, which played the "Trippers in" while the Esk was docking. At 7 o'clock the Esk threw off her lines and prowed for Martinique. We had a choice and most interesting list of passengers.-There passengers.-There were members of the legislature, clergymen j of the various denominations,- many officers and-non-coms of the two British regiments of Castries, and Kingstown, lawyers, doctors, merchants aud their clerks, big planters, high official-- and quite a number of ladies. Before we were well out in ihe Caribbean sea. the Police orchestra tuned up. a floating ball was improvised and my friend. Captain Cap-tain Calder. chief of the St. Vincent black police, with Miss Clavier of Castries, St. Lucia, opened the dance. "What! dancing on Sunday; is it pos- siblef" "Oh, yes, they're not very particular down - n these buccaneer islands, and the nearer you go to the equator the less particular they are. They do not consider a little innocent recreation on Sunday a violation of the Sabbath. In all things that mak for honorable nundiood and pure womanhood the whites, of the West Indies have no superiors. I voice the opinion of every honest .man that has been honored with admission to their society and their homes. We floated into Fort de France at '1 1 o'clock, four hours after we threw off at Castries. St. Lucia. The purser of the Esk and three of us. who accompanied accom-panied him by invitation, went ashore to obtain from the governor permission for our passengers to visit the ruins of St. Pierre, for, without a permit per-mit no one was allowed to cross the boundaries of the ill-fated city. We were received with characteristic character-istic French courtesy, obtained our permit and in less, than an hour were steaming for St. Pierre. VIEW OF PELEE FROM THE SEA. When we rounded the Point of Carbet, the now historic Mount (4,."00 feet) towered aloft in majestic ma-jestic isolation. Its shaggy fcides were torn and deeply furrowed, its flanks were yet bleeding with cement-gray matter, and the granite muscles of tho monster told of its giant strength. Around its imperial im-perial crest were gathered masses of clouds that, at times, drifted apart and revealed tbe hot ste:im escaping from the crater of the volcano. High pressure steam generates electricity and intermittently intermit-tently flashes of lightning played around th lip3. . ; i (Continued on Page 5.) . - N i : ! ; - I t , ' " VOLCANIC ERUPTION DESCRIBED. (Continued from Page 1.) of the volcanic opening. High above the top of the mountain rose as rises the spire over a great cathedral, the obelisk, of which you have read so much the cone which is built up with such marvellous mar-vellous rapidity today, and tomorrow or tonight shattered in whole or in part by an explosion. On this Sunday afternoon, under tho fierce blaze of a tropical sun, the cone shone like burnished burn-ished metal, reflecting upon the trembling clouds an iridescense of striking beauty. When I focused my glass upon the monstrous hill I could perceive jets of steam and puffs of smoke escape from fissures fis-sures opened around the body of the crater. I saw the awful desolation, the wounds and frightful sears on the mountain's slope, the solidified lava that, in its fluid state, zizagged now here, now there, the huge bowlders tossed aside by the rush of the burning river of magma and, above all, I saw the wreck and ruin of forest Hie that went down and out when the monster swept across it to get at St. Pierre. The steamer moored to a buoy off the Place du Mouillage, near the southern limit of St. Pierre proper, and many of the passengers were taken ashore in the ship's boats manned by the crew of the steamer. I was again with the purser who, in his naphtha launch was the first to leave the E.ik, carrying carry-ing with him the official pass for the shin. Two mounted crendarmes cavalry men with police powers pow-ers received and examined the permit, saluted, and asked the purser if he snoke French. The purser answered in Enclish that he did not. "And sir?" addressing himself to mc. "I do. sir," ! I replied, lifting mv hat in obedience to the custom ! of the island. "Then, sir, if you please, tell those ladies in the boats thev ought not to land. There was a slight erup,tion of the volcano yesterday and a 'more serious one is predicted for today." The appearance of the destroyed city had changed very much since I saw it last October. Then it lay un- - der a heavy pall of ashes. Since then the torrential ruins, the winds, and may be a tidal wave, had swet it clean in places, and left exposed Avails that had been hidden by volcanic a.-h and the torrents of boiling mud that on the 20th day of August had overwhelmed the unhappy city for the second sec-ond time. Many of the streets in the Mouillage quarter which had been filled up to the second story of the houses had returned to their normal levels, which permitted easier access and, for those of us who knew the city in other and happier days, helped to recognize the. sites of familiar buildings. In some places the street pavements pave-ments had been washed clean exposing the rails of the tramway. Washings from the mountain had deposited fertile soil amid the ruins and already a luxuriant vegetation was appearing. Vines and creepers were coiling themselves around blackened fragments and grass and weeds were growing in exposed places. In company with Mr. Joseph Bon-adie Bon-adie of the St. Vincent Times, and rr. Sproot of the Kingstown Sentry, I was struggling through the street of Victor Hugo making for the cathedral. where three priests and 1,700 whites, blacks and imi-j imi-j latos perished on the eventful morning of May s". j when the Esk's guns signalled her shore passengers to return. Almost at the. same moment, and. as it by concerted signal, a jet of while vapor escap.-tj from the crater almost at the bae-of the cone, j Then without further warning the mountain opened j wtih a roar that reverberated-through .the ruined j city- and was heard far out at sea. From the womb I I of the restless hill there was discharged, high in j I air, a monstrous accumulation of incandescent ! sand, ashes, seoria and burning rocks which, fall-1 fall-1 ing, apparently fused together, and like billows of cotton wool gathering height and depth, rolled, tossed and tumbled down the side the mountain. On first issuing from the crater the great thing was lurid, but as it raced downwards the dominant j color was white, changing as it cooled to ashen ' gray. Westward to the sea rolled The mighty mass. I Between it and the ocean-lav four niilf; of lnn,l I stripped to the skin and in three minutes, from the moment the moutainous flow began, it plunged into the water.-;. Two miles from its mouth it entered en-tered the deep, dry bed of the Riviere Blanche and when it hit the sea, a hu'gh column of steam reared itself aloft and the waters hizzed in their agony. Then there rose up to a prodigious height an enormous, enor-mous, globular and surging mass and as it rose it robed itself in black and almost quenched the light of the sun. For a few moments Of agonizing su-pense, su-pense, the terrific body hung motionless. A slight inclination southward, it may have been a delusion of ours, paralyzed our faculties, for, if it moved toward us, it would be for all of us a blast of death as appallingly destructive as that which had annihilated anni-hilated the city whose ruins surrounded us. A providential pro-vidential and merciful gust of wind decided the course of the hesitating monster and the great cloud sailed slowly to the northwest, darkening the sky around it. Then it stopped again, as if directed by a human will, hung like a mighty shroud over the sea, then opened and discharged upon the wa- j ters an enormous load of dust and ashes. Unlike the phenomenon which followed the avalanche of I incandescent sand hurled against St. Pierre in I May, there was no aerial explosion within the cloud, j nor any destructive forces developed. " AWFUL RESULTS OF CLOUD EXPLOSION. On that fateful morning two clouds erupted almost al-most simultaneously from the mountain, one following fol-lowing the other as if in chase. The first of these ; came from the open flue of the mountain chimney j and floated southward toward, florae Vert, It contained con-tained within itself all the chemical ingredients for ( the production ' of a violent electric storm. The second came from lower down the mountain at a spot known as L'Etang See, an ancient vent or volcanic vol-canic cavern long ago clogged up by an accumulation accumula-tion of old material and sulphurous gases. The two clouds in their race for the city touched; then from the higher body there passed into the lower a host of electric sparks which flashing into the rolling roll-ing mass of superheated gases produced an 'explosion 'explo-sion the report of which startled communities 250 miles away. It did something more. By atmospheric atmos-pheric concussion it-rang the church bells of Bar-badoes, Bar-badoes, ninety miles away; it struck dead the birds .of the air and the sheep and cattle, in the fields; it j overturned and wrecked three sailing ships oh their course to Rosseaau, Island of Dominica; it poisoned pois-oned the air in St. Pierre and asphixiated those who escaped the hurricane of burning sand. If a cloud charged with electricity had followed and touched the aerial mass that terrified the pas sengers of the Esk on that particular Sunday after- I noon, this description would not appear next week in your paper, nor would there be any one Teft alive to tell how the Esk disappeared and her people per- ( ished. From the disappearing cloud and falling sand we turned to look again upon the mountain. Its summit had cleared and the whole of the northwestern north-western spur gleamed white with a deposit of erupr ted matter. The cone had altered its outlines, it was reduced in height and a large fragment had j been blown from its eastern side. , Of the fear and horrible expectation of death j which possessed and held the men and women around me I say nothing. I was familiar with the texts of the New Testament, portending the dissolution disso-lution of the world, the darkening sun, the waneing j moon and the stars dropping from their settings. . I had often tried to imagine ihe nervous condition and horror of the souls of the men, "withering away with fear and expectation," left upon the earth when these awful calamities were at hand ! and mv imagination would not respond to my expectations ex-pectations and my hopes. On that eventful Sunday afternoon"! knew it all, the memory of it is with me now and, like a second soul, will be mine till for me "time shall be no more." ' ' ' i |