The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-05-20
THE DESTRUCTION OF ST. PIERRE.

scenes at st. Pierre and st. Vincent
can exaggerate the he4rt-rending
tragedy of the facts. Death and de
VISITATION fell with instantaneous
and resistless force.
st. Pierre, which a few days ago
was a pleasant town with twenty.
five thousand people, is today moth
ing more than a mere heap of burn
ing cinders, ashes, and lava covering
the bodies of the inhabitants. ST.
Pierre was the commercial capital of
Martinique, while Fort st. France
(whence reports of the disaster are
now ooming) is the political and
military capital.
Martinique itself is an island of
the Lesser Antilles, a group which is
of volcanic origin 1t contains about
three hundred and eighty square
miles belongs to France; and is
thickly populated, four ffths of it's
two hundred thousand inhabitants
being negroes, chiefly employed in
sugar-making.
Mont Pelee, the principal but not
the only volcano of the island, has
been classed as semi-active it's last
eruption was in 1851. Scientists
have long known that there was seis-
mic connection of some sort between
the volcanoes of this group of islands
and those of Central America, and
there is little doubt that eruptions
and earthquakes in Mexico, Guate-
mala, and Nicaragua have somom ys-
terious subterranean share in the
gigantic Convulsion which has just
devastated part of the West Indies.
The story of the eruption of Mont
Pelee has many points of resemblance
with that of the storm of fire and
lava which buried Pompeii and Her
oulaneum in the extent of the life
destroyed 1t is comparable only with
the event just named, with the de
struotion of Lisbon by earthquake,
and with the stupendous eruption of
Krakatoa, near Java, in 1883, when
one hundred and sixty-three villages
were buried and about thirty. seven
thousand persons were killed.
Mont Pelee had been showing un-
usual signs of activity for some days
before the tremendous outburst of
last week Thursday on Sunday hot
ashes fellin ST. Pierre itself ; on Mon
day a stream of burning lava rushed
down a dry torrent-bed, overwhelmed
plantations, buildings, cattle, and
human beings in a fiery flood half a
mile wide, and at the coast utterly
destroyed the great Guerin sugar
factory. Although two or three
hundred people persisted in this dis-
aster of Monday, those in St. Pierre
seem TO have been only moderately
alarmed, and a report from a gov.
eminent commission which visited
the volcano assured them of safety.
But on Thursday the blow fell with
the suddenness of a Neutrality-suspicious..
It is asserted that a single minute
suficGd for the extinction of thirty
thougand lives. 1t is doubtful
whether any of those who were in
the Aity itself escaped; unknown
numbers of men, women, and chill
dren in the neighboring country
persisted and the survivors gathered
in pitiful and helpless crowds in
places of comparative safety waiting
for succor.
What took place in that awful
minute is described by an observer
on a vessel in st Pierre harbor as q
tremendous cloud of smoke and oind-
ers rushing with terrific rapidity
over the town and port, in an in
slant completely enveIoping the
former in a sheet of fame and rain
ing fire On the ships. Several vessels
were instantly submerged by the
tidal wave shat followed; one, the
Rhoddam, orept to St Lucia, with
ten of her crew burned to death,
others fatally injured, the captain
barely able by dint of strength and
courage to steer with his own burned
hands.
For a day or two efforts by the
French ship Snchet and other vessels
to enter St. Pierre were bamed at
last, on Sunday, alanding was made :;
everywhere were found ruins, heaps
of dead bodies, families looked in
Lone another's arms in the cathedral
alone were the bodies of three thou