The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire Part 36

"Something else we could see, too. Sharks! There were hundreds of them on all sides, jumping up and down in the water. Some of them jumped clear out of it. And sea birds! A flock of them, squawking and crying, made for our rigging and perched there. They seemed like they were scared to death. But the queerest part of it all was the water itself.

It was hot--not so hot that our feet could not stand it when it washed over the deck, but hot enough to make us think that it had been heated by some kind of a fire.

"Well that sort of thing went on hour after hour. The waves, the lightning, the hot water and the sharks, and all the rest of the odd things happening, frightened the crew out of their wits. Some of them prayed out loud--I guess the first time they ever did in their lives.

Some Frenchmen aboard kept running around and yelling, 'Cest le dernier jour!' (This is the last day.) We were all worried. Even the officers began to think that the world was coming to an end. Mighty strange things happen on the sea, but this topped them all.

"I kept to the bridge all night. When the first hour of morning came the storm was still going on. We were all pretty much tired out by that time, but there was no such thing as trying to sleep. The waves still were batting us around and we didn't know whether we were one mile or a thousand miles from sh.o.r.e. At 2 o'clock in the morning all the queer goings on stopped just the way they began--all of a sudden. We lay to until daylight; then we took our reckonings and started off again. We were about 700 miles off Cape Henlopen.

"No, sir; you couldn't get me through a thing like that again for $10,000. None of us was hurt, and the old Nordby herself pulled through all right, but I'd sooner stay ash.o.r.e than see waves without wind and lightning without thunder."

FIERY STREAM CONTAINED POISONOUS GASES

Careful inspection showed that the fiery stream which so completely destroyed St. Pierre must have been composed of poisonous gases, which instantly suffocated every one who inhaled them, and of other gases burning furiously, for nearly all the victims had their hands covering their mouths, or were in some other att.i.tude showing that they had perished from suffocation.

It is believed that Mont Pelee threw off a great gasp of some exceedingly heavy and noxious gas, something akin to firedamp, which settled upon the city and rendered the inhabitants insensible. This was followed by the sheet of flame that swept down the side of the mountain.

This theory is sustained by the experience of the survivors who were taken from the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor, as they say that their first experience was one of faintness.

The dumb animals were wiser than man, and early took warning of the storm of fire which Mont Pelee was storing up to hurl upon the island.

Even before the mountain began to rumble, late in April, live stock became uneasy, and at times were almost uncontrollable. Cattle lowed in the night. Dogs howled and sought the company of their masters, and when driven forth they gave every evidence of fear.

Wild animals disappeared from the vicinity of Mont Pelee. Even the snakes, which at ordinary times are found in great numbers near the volcano, crawled away. Birds ceased singing and left the trees that shaded the sides of Pelee. A great fear seemed to be upon the island, and though it was shared by the human inhabitants, they alone neglected to protect themselves.

Of the villages in the vicinity of St. Pierre only one escaped, the others suffering the fate of the city. The fortunate one was Le Carbet, on the south, which escaped uninjured, the flood of lava stopping when within two hundred feet of the town. Morne Rouge, a beautiful summer resort, frequented by the people of the island during the hot season as a place of recreation, also escaped. In the height of the season several thousand people gathered there, though at the time of the explosion there were but a few hundred. Though located on an elevation between the city and the crater, it was by great good fortune saved.

The Governor of Martinique, Mr. Mouttet, whose precautions to prevent the people fleeing from the city aided to make the work of death complete, was himself among the victims of the burning mountain. With him in this fate was Colonel Dain, commander of the troops who formed a cordon round the doomed city.

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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es 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 cl.u.s.tering around a few substantial buildings or of cabins grouped about old plantation buildings somewhat after the ante-bellum fas.h.i.+on 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.

DESCENDANTS OF ORIGINAL INDIAN POPULATION

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 ma.s.s, 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.

THE APPEARANCE OF THE SOUFRIERE

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 OF 1812

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.

THE TERRIBLE EARTHQUAKE AT CARACAS

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 a.s.sembled 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 MOUNTAIN STONES A HERD-BOY

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 t.i.tans 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sault 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.