The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1902-07-05
INKY LAKE, COLD AS ICE, IN THE
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES TOUR
ISTS' ATTEMPT.
:NGLISHMAN SWIMS IN IT
DESOLATE GRIMNESS AND SILENCE
SHOOK COMPANIONS NERVE.
Descended at Sunset-VolcanOA WOke
That Night-EarthQuake
Shock,

We were a handful of English people
who inhabited the old French Creole
city of St. Pierre, writes William Trew-
bridge, in London Black and White.
"Fou Angais," the native people called
us in their soft, rapid patois. Because
we did mad things in the way of ex-
ploring their beautiful island-things
very harmless and natural to persons IN
strange countries, but utterly impossible
to the well-regulated Creole. But Mar
Unique, the Pearl of the Antilles, was
too fascinating to leave without hav-
ing seen it thoroughly. So on fete days
and Sundays we half-scere mad Eng
fish exiles slipped the chains of work
and secured Martinique like the common
or garden tourists.
Empress Josephine's Birthplace.
At the end of three months I had
seen the blackened ruin, in a tangle of
aloes and wild-banana trees, that was
the birthplace of the Empress Josephine;
I had seen H. M. s. Diamond, as a rock
in the sea near Fort de France is called,
where in the grand old wars a handful
of Rodney's bluejackets for several
months laughed to scorn all efforts of
the redoubtable De Grasse to dislodge
them; had seen Behanzin, king of Da-
honey, exile and prisoner of state in
Martinique, and photographed him in the
midst of his wives and children; had
seen the Fontaine Claude, when high
above the sea in the balmy air of a
bamboo forest the fever-stricken French
soldiers battle away the malaria in a
hot sulphur spring that gushes out of the
rocks; had seen the wonderful Grande
Anse, where the Atlantic breaks on the
shore in pillows half mile long; I had
made myself hail-fellow- well-met at all
the Usines, where the French Royalist
planters, with names like a page of
Froissart, dispense hospitality as mag
niticently as in the good old times.
In word had seen everything that
was to be seen in Martinique, every
thing but looked into the crater of
Mont Pelee.
Two miles out of the town we passed
the Usine Guerin, one of the largest
sugar factories in Martinique, which
in these very days has been obliterat-
ed by the lava river as it rushed with
incredible velocity down the slope OF
Mont Pelee: In the: great yard.strewsd
with newly-reaped sugar-cane young
Guerin was standing in the midst of. his
laborers. who were singing patois
song as they worked to weird Afri-
can air. He hailed to us to stop, and
insisted on our drinking a stirrupcup
of rum and water to give us luck. Five
miles further on at the fishing village
of Precheur We found the parish priest
pruning his rose-trees in a quaint Gre
ole garden. He made us breakfast with
him, and an hour later we were climb
ing the mountain on our hardy Creole
ponies.
It was not long before the road came
to an end in the midst of a tiny negro
hamlet. Here We dismounted, sent the
ponies back to St. Pierre by a negro lad,
and armed with machetas-cutlasses
used for reaping the sugar-cane-we
began the ascent Of Mont Pelee, while
the whole population Of the hamlet,
men, women and children, stood in the
single street regarding us with silence
full of timid curiosity. They never
expected us to return, as the mountain
was said to be infested with serpents
whose bite is death.
After three hours hacking our way
through the dense underbrush, we came
to vast, rocky clearing, and saw tow
ering in front of us in blaze of dax-
cling sunshine the round summit of
Mont Pelee-the shaved mountain for
iS
of on the slopes Of it's last one thousand
feet. Beneath us, over a veritable green
sea of tree-ferns and bamboos, lay the
Caribbean as smooth as a turquoise.
We couldn't see the red hoofs of Pre-
cheur,> but something that 'glittered like
a diamond we took for the city OF St.
Pierre four thosuand feet below us.
In spite of the rough climb, having to
hack every foot Of our way through the
forest, We were not fatigued, for a
balmy breeze like an anodyne was blow
ing down the mountain, and we were
too high to feel the sun. The rest of
the way was comparatively easy work,
and it was with a feeling Of intense
exhilaration, such as all those who
have scaled a great mountain expert
CAICs IAdl We 1cdCAcu L1lS SUu-
NIT.
Looking away from the mountain,
the view was magnificent; the whole
Of Martinique was spread out beneath
US, and on one hand st. Lucia, like a
gray ghost, rose out of the filmy sea,
while on the other, seeming almost near
enough to touch, lowered the green, gi-
gantic volcano of Dominica-Mt. Dia-
b1otin.- But what met our eyes i'm
mediately around us was uncanny. A
lake Of black water, without a ripple,
lay in what looked like an iron cup.
that might have belonged to giant.
1t was the crater Of Mont Pelee.
II almost wish hadn't come" I
said to H -, with a certain nervous
dread. There Is something mysterious
in the terrible silence, and something
menacing in the desolate grimness of
everything"
"Pshaw!" replied H. 1.-THE VOL
cano is extinct. Why, it hasn't even
smoked for nearly half a century,"
We clanbered down the aida ~ +h>