.... Is the great volcano dead?... Nobody knows. Less than forty years ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;—within twenty years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment, it appears to sleep; and the clouds have dripped into the cup of its highest crater till it has become a lake, several hundred yards in circumference. The crater occupied by this lake—called L'Étang, or "The Pool"—has never been active within human memory. There are others,—difficult and dangerous to visit because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and it was one of these, no doubt, which has always been called La Soufrière, that rained ashes over the city in 1851.
The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series of earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in the first week of August,—all much more severe in Guadeloupe than in Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of the western slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time complaining of an oppressive stench of sulphur,—or, as chemists declared it, sulphuretted hydrogen,—when, on the 4th of August, much trepidation was caused by a long and appalling noise from the mountain,—a noise compared by planters on the neighboring slopes to the hollow roaring made by a packet blowing off steam, but infinitely louder. These sounds continued through intervals until the following night, sometimes deepening into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides declared: "C'est la Soufrière qui bout!" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a panic seized the negroes of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the noise was terrible enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the morning of the 6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by creoles who had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All the roofs, trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a white layer of ashes. The same shower blanched the roofs of Monte Rouge, and all the villages about the chief city,—Carbet, Fond-Corré, and Au Prêcheur; also whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the Rivière Blanche, usually of a glaucous color, ran black into the sea like an outpouring of ink, staining its azure for a mile. A committee appointed to make an investigation, and prepare an official report, found that a number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly become active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as the Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much difficulty,—members of the commission being obliged to lower themselves down a succession of precipices with cords of lianas; and it is noteworthy that their researches were prosecuted in spite of the momentary panic created by another outburst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that the main force of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of about one thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,—the temperature of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116° F.);—that there was no change in the configuration of the mountain;—and that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the violent outrush of vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of allaying the general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the volcano, and there planted the great cross which gives the height its name and still remains to commemorate the event.
There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods, and from the higher to the lower plantations,—where they were killed by thousands. For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column of white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.
[29]Also called La Barre de l'Isle,—a long high mountain-wall interlinking the northern and southern system of ranges,—and only two metres broad at the summit. The "Roches-Carrées" display a geological formation unlike anything discovered in the rest of the Antillesian system, excepting in Grenada,—columnar or prismatic basalts.... In the plains of Marin curious petrifactions exist;—I saw a honey-comb so perfect that the eye alone could scarcely divine the transformation.
[30]Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751, declared:—"All possible hindrances to study are encountered here (tout s'oppose à l'étude): if the Americans (creoles) do not devote themselves to research, the fact must not be attributed solely to indifference or indolence. On the one hand, the overpowering and continual heat,—the perpetual succession of mornes and acclivities,—the difficulty of entering forests rendered almost inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all openings, and the prickly plants which oppose a barrier to the naturalist,—the continual anxiety and fear inspired by serpents also;—on the other hand, the disheartening necessity of having to work alone, and the discouragement of being unable to communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons having similar tastes. And finally, it must be remembered that these discouragements and dangers are never mitigated by the least hope of personal consideration, or by the pleasure of emulation,—since such study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the other in a country where nobody undertakes it."—(Voyage à la Martinique.)... The conditions have scarcely changed since De Chanvallon's day, despite the creation of Government roads, and the thinning of the high woods.
[31]Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 taint (1 toise=6 feet 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.
[32]There used to be a strange popular belief that however heavily veiled by clouds the mountain might be prior to an earthquake, these would always vanish with the first shock. But Thibault de Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of this alleged phenomenon; and found that during a number of earthquake shocks the clouds remained over the crater precisely as usual.... There was more foundation, however, for another popular belief, which still exists,—that the absolute purity of the atmosphere about Pelée, and the perfect exposure of its summit for any considerable tinny might be regarded as an omen of hurricane.
II
From St. Pierre, trips to Pelée can be made by several routes;—the most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the Calebasse; but the summit can be reached in much less time by making the ascent from different points along the coast-road to Au Prêcheur,—such as the Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path further north, passing near the celebrated hot springs (Fontaines Chaudes). You drive towards Au Prêcheur, and begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations.... The road by which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of Pelée is very picturesque:—you cross the Roxelane, the Rivière des Pères, the Rivière Sèche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent of rocks);—passing first by the suburb of Fond-Corré, with its cocoa groves, and broad beach of iron-gray sand,—a bathing resort;—then Pointe Prince, and the Fond de Canonville, somnolent villages that occupy wrinkles in the hem of Pelée's lava robe. The drive ultimately rises and lowers over the undulations of the cliff, and is well shadowed along the greater part of its course: you will admire many huge fromagers, or silk-cotton trees, various heavy lines of tamarinds, and groups of flamboyants with thick dark feathery foliage, and cassia-trees with long pods pending and blackening from every branch, and hedges of campêche, or logwood, and calabash-trees, and multitudes of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit called in creole raisins-bò-lanmè, or "sea-side grapes." Then you reach Au Prêcheur: a very antiquated village, which boasts a stone church and a little public square with a fountain in it. If you have time to cross the Rivière du Prêcheur, a little further on, you can obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly to a grand altitude, sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of the Abysses (Aux Abymes),—whose name was doubtless suggested by the immense depth of the sea at that point.... It was under the shadow of those cliffs that the Confederate cruiser Alabama once, hid herself, as a fish hides in the shadow of a rock, and escaped from her pursuer, the Iroquois. She had long been blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the Northern man-of-war,—anxiously awaiting a chance to pounce upon her the instant she should leave French waters;—and various Yankee vessels in port were to send up rocket-signals should the Alabama attempt to escape under cover of darkness. But one night the privateer took a creole pilot on board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights masked, and her chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could betray her to the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near enough to discern her movements through the darkness at once shot rockets south; and the Iroquois gave chase. The Alabama hugged the high shore as far as Carbet, remaining quite invisible in the shadow of it: then she suddenly turned and recrossed the harbor. Again Yankee rockets betrayed her manœuvre to the Iroquois; but she gained Aux Abymes, laid herself dose to the enormous black cliff, and there remained indistinguishable; the Iroquois steamed by north without seeing her. Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of sight, she put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica channel. The pilot was a poor mulatto, who thought himself well paid with five hundred francs!
... The more popular route to Pelée by way of Morne Rouge is otherwise interesting.... Anybody not too much afraid of the tropic sun must find it a delightful experience to follow the mountain roads leading to the interior from the city, as all the mornes traversed by them command landscapes of extraordinary beauty. According to the zigzags of the way, the scenery shifts panoramically. At one moment you are looking down into valleys a thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of meadow or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered shapes—sharp as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,—with further eminences ranging away through pearline color to high-peaked remotenesses of vapory gold. As you follow the windings of such a way as the road of the Morne Labelle, or the Morne d'Orange, the city disappears and reappears many times,—always diminishing, till at last it looks no bigger than a chess-board. Simultaneously distant mountain shapes appear to unfold and lengthen;—and always, always the sea rises with your rising. Viewed at first from the bulwark (boulevard) commanding the roofs of the town, its horizon-line seemed straight and keen as a knife-edge;—but as you mount higher, it elongates, begins to curve; and gradually the whole azure expanse of water broadens out roundly like a disk. From certain very lofty summits further inland you behold the immense blue circle touching the sky all round you,—except where a still greater altitude, like that of Pelée or the Pitons, breaks the ring; and this high vision of the sea has a phantasmal effect hard to describe, and due to vapory conditions of the atmosphere. There are bright cloudless days when, even as seen from the city, the ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but on any day, in any season, that you ascend to a point dominating the sea by a thousand feet, the rim of the visible world takes a ghostliness that startles,—because the prodigious light gives to all near shapes such intense sharpness of outline and vividness of color.