There were no rocky cliffs, no crags, no protruding boulders. The mountain was peace itself. It seemed to promise perpetual protection. The poetic natives relied upon it to keep back storms from the land and frighten, with its stern brow, the tempests from the sea. They pointed to it with profoundest pride as one of the most beautiful mountains in the world.
Children played in its bowers and arbors; families picnicked there day after day during the balmy weather; hundreds of tourists ascended to the summit and looked with pleasure at the beautiful crystal lake which sparkled and glinted in the sunshine. Mont Pelee was the place of enjoyment of the people of St. Pierre. I can hear the placid natives say: “Old Father Pelee is our protector—not our destroyer.”
Not until two weeks before the eruption did the slumbering mountain show signs of waking to death and disaster. On the 23d of April it first displayed symptoms of internal disquiet. A great column of smoke began to rise from it, and was accompanied from time to time by showers of ashes and cinders.
Despite these signals, there was nothing until Monday, May 5th, to indicate actual danger. On that day a stream of smoking mud and lava burst through the top of the crater and plunged into the valley of the River Blanche, overwhelming the Guerin sugar works and killing twenty-three workmen and the son of the proprietor. Mr. Guerin’s was one of the largest sugar works on the island; its destruction entailed a heavy loss. The mud which overwhelmed it followed the beds of streams towards the north of the island.
The alarm in the city was great, but it was somewhat allayed by the report of an expert commission appointed by the Governor, which decided that the eruption was normal and that the city was in no peril. To further allay the excitement, the Governor, with several scientists, took up his residence in St. Pierre. He could not restrain the people by force, but the moral effect of his presence and the decision of the scientists had a similar disastrous result.
A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION BY A SUFFERER.
The existing state of affairs during these few waiting days is so graphically given in a letter from Mrs. Thomas T. Prentis, wife of the United States Consul at St. Pierre, to her sister in Melrose, a suburban city of Boston, that we quote it here:
“My Dear Sister: This morning the whole population of the city is on the alert and every eye is directed toward Mont Pelee, an extinct volcano. Everybody is afraid that the volcano has taken into its heart to burst forth and destroy the whole island.
“Fifty years ago Mont Pelee burst forth with terrific force and destroyed everything within a radius of several miles. For several days the mountain has been bursting forth in flame and immense quantities of lava are flowing down its sides.
“All the inhabitants are going up to see it. There is not a horse to be had on the island, those belonging to the natives being kept in readiness to leave at a moment’s notice.