The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-09-07

ed in the present series of eruptions was on the west side of the old crater lake, L'Etang Sec. and the axis of the new cone is northwest Os the center or the old crater. This has resulted in the complete filling of the northwestern quarter of the crater, making the slope of the new cone continuous or nearly continuous with the exterior of the old crater-rim on that side. On the north ern, eastern and southern sides. be- tween the new cone and the crater-rim, there is a shallow spiral valley which debouches into the gorge of the RieVere Blanche on the southwest. The deepest part of this valley is beneath the ruins of Morne Lecroix, and is estimated to be about 200 feet deep. On the south west the new cone slopes continuously into the debris filling the gorge of the Blanche. Great ribs of solid rock pro- ject from several parts of the new inner cone, which is composite affair made up of fragmental ejecta of the vents,
 lava which has welled up or been push | ed uD from below, and masses which have fallen or been blown off from the | latter. These ribs radiate more or less roughly from the center of the cone, and above them towers the spine or tooth which is so remarkable. The spine like the ribs is evidently composed of ''solid'' rock, that is. it is not made of | fragments which have been thrown up into the air by the volcano and have fallen back into a pile.
 l Although rifted and profoundly fis- sured the spine is not a chimney, there being no conduit through it. The place | from which have come the heaviest out bursts since August 30 is on the south- l west side of the new cone, but another very active, spot is on the northwest side: both are near the base of the lspine. The spine itself is more than 1000 feet high. Separate fragments could not be piled up, to such height
 and rest at the angles shone by the sides of the spine. The side toward the east is smooth and vertically fiuted, as if it had been rubbed against some-
 thing hard, and this suggests the expla- nation of the phenomenon. The rock
 mass of the cone, and particularly that
 of the spine, has been pushed up bodily lfrom below in solid or nearly solid lcondition by the enormous expansive forces working underneath, and is lmaintained there somewhat like the stopper of bottle, partly by friction Iagainst the sides of the neck and by
 the expansive forces underneath, an idea virtually new to the science ot ivulcanology. The French government commission, of which Professor A. La. tcroiX is the head, was the first to put
 forward this theory and to include Pc
 lee among the "cumulo-volcanoes. The
 shape of the spine, with it's sides form. ] ing angles 75, S7 and even 90 degrees
 with the horizontal, is an argument iagainst the theory that it has beer
 formed by elected blocks or bombs
 which were sufficiently pasty to stick together on falling, and in favor of the
 stopper theory. The great and sud.
 den change in altitude of the spine
 with reference to the rest of the cone
 without great changes in it's shape point in the same direction. Frequent.
 ly the cone and spine show, red incan.
 descent lines at night, together with g
 luminous spot near the top of the spine
 -an additional proof of the "solid" as
 distinguished from fragmentaL char, acter of the mass Edmund Otis Ho,
 vey's "A Wonderful Change in Pelee' in the Century. '