Martinique and St. Vincent (Part 4)

At midday the craters ejected enormous columns of steamy vapor, rising majestically eight miles high and expanding into wonderful shapes, resembling enormous cauliflowers, gigantic wheels, and beautiful flower forms, all streaked up and down and crosswise with vivid flashes of lighting, awing the beholder and impressing the mind with fear. The mountain labored to rid itself of a mass of molten lava, which later flowed over, in six streams, down the side of the volcano, and the greater noises following united in one great, continuous roar all evening, through the night to Thursday morning, accompanied with black rain, falling dust, and favillae scoriae, attended with midnight darkness all Wednesday, creating feelings of fear and anxious suspense.

On the morning of Friday there was a fresh eruption and ejections of fiery matter, more dust covering the island, in some places two feet deep.

The crater is still active as this dispatch is sent and great loss of life is believed to have occurred. The lava has destroyed several districts, with their live stock. People are fleeing to this town; streams are dried up and in many places a food and water famine is threatened. The government is feeding numbers of sufferers from the outbreak.

Great physical changes have taken place in the neighborhood of the Soufriere.

Several districts have not yet been heard from and the scene of the eruption is unapproachable. Every hour brings sadder news. The nurses and doctors are overworked. It is impossible to give full details at present.

As a result of the disaster on this island all business has been suspended for three days. The public mind is still unsettled, fearing further disaster.

Among the deaths are whole families, whose corpses are, in several places, still lying unburied. The dead will be buried in trenches.