With this rush of fatal gases came a river of burning air, wide as the city, and cleaning up what had escaped the storm of hot sand and the hurricane of noxious gases. For nearly all death was instantaneous. The priest with the persons to whom he was giving Holy Communion died together; the nun died at her prayers; mother and babe gasped once and were dead; the wedding party on the way to the altar sank, never to rise again; the young libertine sleeping off his night's dissipation, the family at breakfast, never moved they had no time to move. "Their bosoms once heaved and forever grew still."

If the ruin of St. Pierre was a punishment for sacrilege and unheard-of blasphemy, the world must acknowledge it was complete, even to the burying of the dead.

CHAPTER IX

THE CITY OF THE DEAD

Those that can pity, here

May if they think it well, let fall a tear.
The subject will deserve it.

Prologue to Henry VIII.

THE island of Martinique will for all time live in history, for in the annals of the world there is no record of a visitation so calamitous and appallingly sudden in its effect as that which destroyed, on May 8th, 1902, the beautiful city of St. Pierre and its people. Beyond denial the island and the people are yet fair to look upon. The negroes even are unlike the blacks of other lands. Their negro-French would be unintelligible in Paris and yet it is the softest, sweetest, most musical speech I ever heard from human lips. It knows no grammar; but it is the very essence of symphony and melody. The natural beauties of the island are, even now, after months of volcanic ruin and torrential storm, a fascinating study. I well remember the morning I ascended the side of the headland and began to get command of a prospect, which, as it then appeared in the morning light and sunshine, the opalescent sea in calm, Fort de France embowered in palms, and the valleys, mountains and picturesque villages in repose, seemed to me the most exquisite view I had ever beheld in my wanderings.