Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1902 — IN VOLCANOES’ WAKE. [ARTICLE]

IN VOLCANOES’ WAKE.

AWFUL CONDITIONS ON MARTINIQUE AND ST. VINCENT. Devastated Islands Where Death Is Regnant and Pestilence Threatens Air Polluted by Unburied DeadMount Pelec Still Menaces. Like fitful monsters the volcanic mountains of Mount I’clee and La Soufriere still threaten the Jslaflds of Martinique and gL_Xiaecnr and the surrounding seas. The terrific energy exerted the week before last, when St. I’ierre was wiped out of existence and the northern half of the island Of St. Vincent was turned into a calcined ruin, has ceased; but the volcanoes still are active intermittently, now belching forth torrents of. ashes, -now sending only clouds of smoke and vapor into, the air, but at all times dreadful, black, ugly and menacing. St. I’ierre at times rests beneath a pall of smoke and sulphurous, impalpable ashes. The air is hot and stilling and the workers amid the ruins of palaces and huts look toward the volcano nervously, fearing each moment that another cyclone of tire may shoot from the mouth of the crater, to blast, incinerate and destroy. Several times the searchers have been driven from the ruins by sudden and heavy eruptions, which were powerful enough to rain down ashes in the streets of Fort de France, ten miles distant. Some of riiese eruptions were accompanied by thunder, which shook the island, and by blinding flashes of lightning. Some of the people around St. I’ierre. who had returned to their homes, were driven forth again by these displays aud made their way to Fort de France. They report that new volcanoes have been formed in the neighborhood of Mount Pelee aud the belief is now well-

nigh general that other eruptions, i»erhaps as dreadful as those of May 8, wheu St. I’ierre was destroyed, will occur. Amid the Ruins. Meantime the work of searching the ruins of the city is being slowly prosecuted. The stench from putrefying bodies and the stifling odor from volcanic matter render the work painful and dangerous. Few of the bodies are' identifiable. Most of them arc covered by volcanic deposits and inlu-h time will be Required to exhume them. Bodies are being found in all kinds of conditions. Some are calcined; others are free from burns. Bodies locked in each other’s arms tell ' the awful story of the deaths of huabauds aud wives, parents aud children. Mothers and their babes are found in |K>ritions which show the unavailing efforts of maternal love to shelter and to save. The whole scene is one of heartrending horror and pity. And yet in spite of the supreme tragedy; in spite of Death's presence at every turn; in spite of the menacing danger’ that sits enthroned, like a malignant spirit, upon Mount I’elee, human ghouls are busy plundering the dead. Some have been shot down iu their tracks by the French guards; some hare been arrested and sentenced to various periods of imprisonment, but neither death nor deprivation of liberty is sufficient to deter the human hyenas and in the outlying districts looting still goes on. An official estimate of those who were buried in the ruins ofi St. Pierre gives the numt>er at 28.000. In addition 3,00*1 persons were drowned and became the prey of sharks. A fifth of the surface of the island was burned and the other four-fifths ar* covered with ashes. At Riviere, Blanche, a suburban town of BL P'Jrre, the deposit of mud Is twenty I

feet deep. Here it was that the first great eruption of the volcano on May 5 manifested 3 'itself, burying the Guerin sugar mill and killing twenty-three persons. Horrible Conditions on St. Vincent. On the Island of St. Vincent conditions are horrible. The,.whole northern part of the island is a ruin. Jfist now La Soufriere is reduced, to paswviry.blitilOflnEz can tell when the volcano may become netive again antl bek-h 4orth death ami destruction. All the earlier estimates of the dead were too 10w... At first it was thounght that only 500 persons perished, hut daily since the horror has grown. Up to the present I.SOO dead bodies' have been found and buried or burned. Four hundred more victims are scattered over the. northern part of the island, some exposed and rotting under the tropical sun, some buried beneath deposits of ashes and lava. The carcasses of thousands of domestic animals are scattered over the scene of desolation, poisoning the atmosphere and creating pestilence. Frightful odors permeate the island and pestilence has already made its appearance. Immense fires are .now blazing in the region devastated and in them the carcasses of animals are being cremated.