Selected American history

CHAPTER XXIX.

St. Vincent Island and Mont Soufriere in 1812.

Among all the islands of the Caribbees St. Vincent is unique in natural wonders and beauties. Situated about ninety-five miles west of Barbados, it has a length of eighteen and a width of eleven miles, the whole mass being largely composed of a single peak which rises from the ocean's bed. From north to south volcanic hills traverse its length, their ridges intersected by fertile and beautiful valleys.

A ridge of mountains crosses the island, dividing it into eastern and western parts. Kingstown, the capital, a town of 8,000 inhabitants, is on the southward side and extends along the shores of a beautiful bay, with mountains gradually rising behind it in the form of a vast amphitheatre. Three streets, broad and lined with good houses, run parallel to the water-front. There are many other intersecting highways, some of which lead back to the foothills, from which good roads ascend the mountains.

The majority of the houses have red tile roofing and a goodly number of them are of stone, one story high, with thick walls after the Spanish style—the same types of houses that were in St. Pierre and which are not unlike the old Roman houses which in all stages of ruin and semi-preservation are found in Pompeii to this day.

Behind the general group of the houses of the town loom the Governor's residence and the buildings of the botanical gardens which overlook the town.

Kingstown is the trading centre and the town of importance in the island. It contains the churches and chapels of five Protestant denominations and a number of excellent schools. Away from Kingstown, and the smaller settlement of Georgetown, the population is almost wholly rural, occupying scattered villages which consist of negro huts clustering around a few substantial buildings or of cabins grouped about old plantation buildings somewhat after the ante-bellum fashion in our own Southern States.

One of the tragedies of the West Indies was the sinking of old Port Royal, the resort of buccaneers, in 1692. The harbor of Kingstown is commonly supposed to cover the site of the old settlement. There is a tradition that a buoy for many years was attached to the spire of a sunken church in order to warn mariners. Three thousand persons perished in the disaster.

The northern portion of the island, that desolated by the recent volcanic eruption, was inhabited by people living in the manner just described, the great majority of them being negroes. The total population of the island is about 45,000, of whom 30,000 are Africans and about 3,000 Europeans, the remainder being nearly all Asiatics. There are, or rather were, a number of Caribs, the descendants of the original warlike Indian population of these islands. Many of these live in St. Vincent, though there are others in Dominico. As their residence was in the northern section of the island, the volcano seems to have completed the work for the Caribs of this island which the Spaniard long ago began. These Caribs were really half-breds, having amalgamated with the negroes. Many of the blacks own land of their own, raising arrow root, which, since the decay of the sugar industry, is the chief export.

In an island only eighteen miles long by eleven broad there is not room for any distinctly marked mountain range. The whole of St. Vincent, in fact, is a fantastic tumble of hills, culminating in the volcanic ridge which runs lengthwise of the oval-shaped island. The culminating peak of the great volcanic mass, for St. Vincent is nothing more, is Mont Garou, of which La Soufriere is a sort of lofty excrescence in the northwest, 4,048 feet high, and flanking the main peak at some distance away.

It may be said that all the volcanic mountains in this part of the West Indies have what the people call a "soufriere"—a "sulphur pit," or "sulphur crater"—the name coming, as in the case of past disturbances of Mont Pelee, from the strong stench of sulphuretted hydrogen which issues from them when the volcano becomes agitated.

In 1812 it was La Soufriere adjacent to Mont Garou which broke loose on the island of St. Vincent, and it is the same Soufriere which again has devastated the island and has bombarded Kingstown with rocks, lava and ashes.

The old crater of Mont Garou has long been extinct, and, like the old crater of Mont Pelee, near St. Pierre, it had far down in its depths, surrounded by sheer cliffs from 500 to 800 feet high, a lake. Glimpses of the lake of Mont Garou are difficult to get, owing to the thick verdure growing about the dangerous edges of the precipices, but those who have seen it describe it as a beautiful sheet of deep blue water.

Previous to the eruption of 1812 the appearance of the Soufriere was most interesting. The crater was half a mile in diameter and five hundred feet in depth. In its centre was a conical hill, fringed with shrubs and vines; at whose base were two small lakes, one sulphurous, the other pure and tasteless. This lovely and beautiful spot was rendered more interesting by the singularly melodious notes of a bird, an inhabitant of these upper solitudes, and altogether unknown to the other parts of the island—hence called, or supposed to be, "invisible," as it had never been seen. (It is of interest to state that Frederick A. Ober, in a visit to the island some twenty years ago, succeeded in obtaining specimens of this previously unknown bird.) From the fissures of the cone a thin white smoke exuded, occasionally tinged with a light blue flame. Evergreens, flowers and aromatic shrubs clothed the steep sides of the crater, which made, as the first indication of the eruption on April 27, 1812, a tremulous noise in the air. A severe concussion of the earth followed, and then a column of thick black smoke burst from the crater.

The eruption which followed these premonitory symptoms was one of the most terrific which had occurred in the West Indies up to that time. It was the culminating event which seemed to relieve a pressure within the earth's crust which extended from the Mississippi Valley to Caracas, Venezuela, producing terrible effects in the latter place. Here, thirty-five days before the volcanic explosion, the ground was rent and shaken by a frightful earthquake which hurled the city in ruins to the ground and killed ten thousand of its inhabitants in a moment of time.

La Soufriere made the first historic display of its hidden powers in 1718, when lava poured from its crater. A far more violent demonstration of its destructive forces was that above mentioned. On this occasion the eruption lasted for three days, ruining a number of the estates in the vicinity and destroying many lives. Myriads of tons of ashes, cinders, pumice and scoriae, hurled from the crater, fell in every section of the island. Volumes of sand darkened the air, and woods, ridges and cane fields were covered with light gray ashes, which speedily destroyed all vegetation. The sun for three days seemed to be in a total eclipse, the sea was discolored and the ground bore a wintry appearance from the white crust of fallen ashes.

Carib natives who lived at Morne Rond fled from their houses to Kingstown. As the third day drew to a close flames sprang pyramidically from the crater, accompanied by loud thunder and electric flashes, which rent the column of smoke hanging over the volcano. Eruptive matter pouring from the northwest side plunged over the cliff, carrying down rocks and woods in its course. The island was shaken by an earthquake and bombarded with showers of cinders and stones, which set houses on fire and killed many of the natives.

For nearly two years before this explosion earthquakes had been common, and sea and land had been agitated from the valley of the Mississippi to the coasts of Venezuela and the mountains of New Grenada, and from the Azores to the West Indies. On March 26, 1812, these culminated in the terrible tragedy, spoken of above, of which Humboldt gives us a vivid account.

On that day the people of the Venezuelan city of Caracas were assembled in the churches, beneath a still and blazing sky, when the earth suddenly heaved and shook, like a great monster waking from slumber, and in a single minute 10,000 people were buried beneath the walls of churches and houses, which tumbled in hideous ruin upon their heads. The same earthquake made itself felt along the whole line of the Northern Cordilleras, working terrible destruction, and shook the earth as far as Santa Fe de Bogota and Honda, 180 leagues from Caracas. This was a preliminary symptom of the internal disorder of the earth.

While the wretched inhabitants of Caracas who had escaped the earthquake were dying of fever and starvation, and seeking among villages and farms places of safety from the renewed earthquake shocks, the almost forgotten volcano of St. Vincent was muttering in suppressed wrath. For twelve months it had given warning, by frequent shocks of the earth, that it was making ready to play its part in the great subterranean battle. On the 27th of April its deep-hidden powers broke their bonds, and the conflict between rock and fire began.

The first intimation of the outbreak was rather amusing than alarming. A negro boy was herding cattle on the mountain side. A stone fell near him. Another followed. He fancied that some other boys were pelting him from the cliff above, and began throwing stones upward at his fancied concealed tormentors. But the stones fell thicker, among them some too large to be thrown by any human hand. Only then did the little fellow awake to the fact that it was not a boy like himself, but the mighty mountain, that was flinging these stones at him. He looked up and saw that the black column which was rising from the crater's mouth was no longer harmless vapor, but dust, ashes and stones. Leaving the cattle to their fate, he fled for his life, while the mighty cannon of the Titans roared behind him as he ran. For three days and nights this continued; then, on the 30th, a stream of lava poured over the crater's rim and rushed downward, reaching the sea in four hours, and the great eruption was at an end.

On the same day, says Humboldt, at a distance of more than 200 leagues, "the inhabitants not only of Caracas, but of Calabozo, situated in the midst of the Lianos, over a space of 4,000 square leagues, were terrified by a subterranean noise which resembled frequent discharges of the heaviest cannon. It was accompanied by no shock, and, what is very remarkable, was as loud on the coast as at eighty leagues' distance inland, and at Caracas, as well as at Calabozo, preparations were made to put the place in defence against an enemy who seemed to be advancing with heavy artillery."

It was no enemy that man could deal with. Fortunately, it confined its assault to deep noises, and desisted from earthquake shocks. Similar noises were heard in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and here also without shocks. The internal thunder was the signal of what was taking place on St. Vincent. With this last warning sound the trouble, which had lasted so long, was at an end. The earthquakes which for two years had shaken a sheet of the earth's surface larger than half Europe, were stilled by the eruption of St. Vincent's volcanic peak.

Northeast of the original crater of the Soufriere a new one was formed which was a half mile in diameter and five hundred feet deep. The old crater was in time transformed into a beautiful blue lake, as above stated, walled in by ragged cliffs to a height of eight hundred feet.

It was looked upon as a remarkable circumstance that although the air was perfectly calm during the eruption, Barbados, which is ninety-five miles to the windward, was covered inches deep with ashes. The inhabitants there and on other neighboring islands were terrified by the darkness, which continued for four hours and a half. Troops were called under arms, the supposition from the continued noise being that hostile fleets were in an engagement.

The movement of the ashes to windward, as just stated, was viewed as a remarkable phenomenon, and is cited by Elise Reclus, in "The Ocean," to show the force of different aerial currents; "On the first day of May, 1812, when the northeast trade-wind was in all its force, enormous quantities of ashes obscured the atmosphere above the Island of Barbados, and covered the ground with a thick layer. One would have supposed that they came from the volcanoes of the Azores, which were to the northeast; nevertheless they were cast up by the crater in St. Vincent, one hundred miles to the west. It is therefore certain that the debris had been hurled, by the force of the eruption, above the moving sheet of the trade-winds into an aerial river proceeding in a contrary direction." For this it must have been hurled miles high into the air, till caught by the current of the anti-trade winds.

From Charles Kingsley's "At Last" we extract, from the account of the visit of the author to St. Vincent, some interesting matter concerning the 1812 eruption and its effect on the mountain; also its influence upon distant Barbados, as just stated.

"The strangest fact about this eruption was, that the mountain did not make use of its old crater. The original vent must have become so jammed and consolidated, in the few years between 1785 and 1812, that it could not be reopened, even by a steam force the vastness of which may be guessed at from the vastness of the area which it had shaken for two years. So, when the eruption was over, it was found that the old crater-lake, incredible as it may seem, remained undisturbed, so far as has been ascertained; but close to it, and separated only by a knife-edge of rock some 700 feet in height, and so narrow that, as I was assured by one who had seen it, it is dangerous to crawl along it, a second crater, nearly as large as the first, had been blasted out, the bottom of which, in like manner, was afterward filled with water.

"I regretted much that I could not visit it. Three points I longed to ascertain carefully—the relative heights of the water in the two craters; the height and nature of the spot where the lava stream issued; and, lastly, if possible, the actual causes of the locally famous Rabacca, or 'Dry River,' one of the largest streams in the island, which was swallowed up during the eruption, at a short distance from its source, leaving its bed an arid gully to this day. But it could not be, and I owe what little I know of the summit of the soufriere principally to a most intelligent and gentleman-like young Wesleyan minister, whose name has escaped me. He described vividly, as we stood together on the deck, looking up at the volcano, the awful beauty of the twin lakes, and of the clouds which, for months together, whirl in and out of the cups in fantastic shapes before the eddies of the trade wind.

"The day after the explosion, 'Black Sunday,' gave a proof of, though no measure of, the enormous force which had been exerted. Eighty miles to windward lies Barbados. All Saturday a heavy cannonading had been heard to the eastward. The English and French fleets were surely engaged. The soldiers were called out; the batteries manned; but the cannonade died away, and all went to bed in wonder. On the 1st of May the clocks struck six, but the sun did not, as usual in the tropics, answer to the call. The darkness was still intense, and grew more intense as the morning wore on. A slow and silent rain of impalpable dust was falling over the whole island. The negroes rushed shrieking into the streets. Surely the last day was come. The white folk caught (and little blame to them) the panic, and some began to pray who had not prayed for years. The pious and the educated (and there were plenty of both in Barbados) were not proof against the infection. Old letters describe the scene in the churches that morning as hideous—prayers, sobs, and cries, in Stygian darkness, from trembling crowds. And still the darkness continued and the dust fell.

"I have a letter written by one long since dead, who had at least powers of description of no common order, telling how, when he tried to go out of his house upon the east coast, he could not find the trees on his own lawn save by feeling for their stems. He stood amazed not only in utter darkness, but in utter silence; for the trade-wind had fallen dead, the everlasting roar of the surf was gone, and the only noise was the crashing of branches, snapped by the weight of the clammy dust. He went in again, and waited. About one o'clock the veil began to lift; a lurid sunlight stared in from the horizon, but all was black overhead. Gradually the dust drifted away; the island saw the sun once more, and saw itself inches deep in black, and in this case fertilizing, dust. The trade-wind blew suddenly once more out of the clear east, and the surf roared again along the shore.

"Meanwhile a heavy earthquake-wave had struck part at least of the shores of Barbados. The gentleman on the east coast, going out, found traces of the sea, and boats and logs washed up some ten to twenty feet above high-tide mark; a convulsion which seemed to have gone unmarked during the general dismay.

"One man at least, an old friend of John Hunter, Sir Joseph Banks and others their compeers, was above the dismay, and the superstitious panic which accompanied it. Finding it still dark when he rose to dress, he opened (so the story used to run) his window; found it stick, and felt upon the sill a coat of soft powder. 'The volcano in St. Vincent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, 'and this is the dust of it.' So he quieted his household and his negroes, lighted his candles, and went to his scientific books, in that delight, mingled with an awe not the less deep, because it is rational and self-possessed, with which he, like the other men of science, looked at the wonders of this wondrous world."