The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-05-08

1 It's bare bones bleaching in the | tropic sun, its roofIess ruins open to the rain, a scene of desolation and de- struction, a city dead beyond all hope l of resurrectfon-such is St. Pierre, such 1t has been since eleven years ago Pto-day, the eighth day of May, 1902, ewhen Mount PeIee sent GOS~H ES cloud of death; such 1t will ever be,
 until it's grim and grizzly skeleton has crumbled into dust.
 Eleven years ago to-day, at 7:30 in the morning, St. Pierre, the metropo- lis of the French West Indian Island of Martinique, was Q city of forty thousand population. An hour later it was a collection of ruins, with a living population of one person, a con vict, who escaped with his life, but died a few days later. A deafening explosion was the herald of destruc
 ton, and the people rushed for the churches, where death, in the form of a cloud of sulphurous gases, came down upon them and stiIled their cries and prayers. Of the eighteen vessels in the harbor, only one escaped the tidal wave that followed the erup- ton.
 The eleventh anniversary of that most complete of disasters finds St. Pierre's ruins half covered with vines and undergrowth and gay blossoms. Within it's ruins lie the bones of most
 
 for but few of the bodies were re- covered and buried elsewhere. In the outskirts of the dead city are a few huts inhabited by negroes who risk Pelee's perils in order to sell relics to tourists. These half-naked ven ders of grizzly mementoes are St. Pierre's only inhabitants
 An examination of the ruins gives some idea of the brief terrors of that day of wrath. All metals were melt ed for fused, blocks of marble and granite were split into fragments, and wood was charred as if by flame. The main business street of St. Pierre, mile long, is still lined with shops of stone, but all are empty, save for the volcanic dust that fills most of them to a depth of several feet. Doors and windows are gone, for neither wood nor glass could withstand the heat Trees, shrubs, vegetation of all sorts, line the deserted thoroughfare that was once the most fashionable shop ping street in the West Indies, and creeping vines and brilliant flowers be-. deck the ruins that are the ton1bs of est city in the West Indies is as dead as Sodom and Gomorrah.
 Fourteen miles south of St. Pierre is Fort-de-France, now the capital and commercial metropolis of Martin iQue. It is a city of about twenty-five thousand pOpular1OQ, ana, since the destruction of St. Pierre, has become the trade center of the 160,0O0 peo-| pie who inhabit the fertile valleys and rugged mountain slopes of Martinique.
 Martinique has just suffered a severe blow by reason of the adverse report of the French engineers sent out to investigate the possibilities for trade consequent upon the opening of the Panama canal. It was hoped that the great rnar1time traffic would bring prosperity to Martinique, but the com nnissioners found that shipping would take a more northerly route, and that expenditures for dock and harbor iZn- provements would not be justified.
 Martinique was the birthplace of Josephine, Empress of the French, and her youth was spent near St. Pierre. A statue of the first wife of the Man of Destiny was St. Pierre's most magnificent monument. The centenary of the death of Josephine will be observed a year hence with special memorial exercises at F'ort-de- France.