St Michaels College - Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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HDV Seconb lDisit to St. llbierre, flbarttnique-Giontinueb minutes from the moment the mountainous How began, it plunged into the waters. Two miles from its mouth it entered the deep, dry bed of Riviere Blanche, and when it hit the sea a huge column of steam reared itself aloft and the waters hizzed in their agony. Then there rose up to a prodigious height an enormous globular and surging mass, and as it rose it robed itself in black and almost quenched the light of the sun. For a few moments of agonizing suspense, the terrific body hung motionless. A slight inclination southward, it may have been a delusion of ours, paralyzed our faculties, for, if it moved towards us it would be for all of us a blast of death as ap- pallingly destructive as that which annihilated the city whose ruins surrounded us. A providential and merciful gust of wind decided the course of the hesitating monster, and the great cloud sailed slowly to the northwest, darkening the sky around it. Then it stopped again, as if directed by a human will, hung like a mighty shroud over the sea, then opened and discharged upon the waters an enormous mass of dust and ashes. Unlike the phenomenon which followed the avalanche of incandescent sand hurled against St. Pierre in May, there was no aerial explosion within the cloud, nor any destructive forces developed. AXVFUL RESULTS OF CLOUD EXPLOSION, On that fateful morning two clouds erupted almost simultaneously from the mountain, one following the other as if in chase. The first of these came from the open flue of the mountain chimney and lioated southward toward Horne Yert. It contained within itself all the chemical ingredients for the production of a violent electric storm. The second came from lower down the mountain, from ljlitana. an old vent or yol- canic cayern long ago clogged up by an accumulation of old material and sulpliurous gases. The two clouds in their race for the city touched: then from the higher body there rushed into the lower a host of electric sparks which. flashing into the QI rolling mass of superheated gases, created an explosion. the re- port of which startled communities 250 miles away. It did something more. By atmospheric concussion it rang the church bells of Barbadoes, ninety miles from Peleeg it struck dead the birds of the air and the sheep and cattle in the fields, it overturned and wrecked three sailing ships on their course to Rosseau, Island of Dominicag it poisoned the air in St. Pierre and asphyxiated those who escaped the hurricane of burning sand. If a cloud charged with electricity had followed and touch- ed the aerial mass that terrified the passengers of the lisk on that particular Sunday afternoon, this description would not now appear in your College Year Book, nor would there be anyone left alive to tell how the Esk disappeared and her people perished. From the disappearing cloud and falling sand we turned to look again upon the mountain. ' Its summit had cleared and the whole western spur gleamed white with a deposit of erupted matter. The cone had altered its outlines, it was reduced in height and a large fragment had been blown from its eastern side. Of the fear and horrible expectation of death which possessed and held the men and women around me l say nothing. I was v M ment portending sun. the waning settings. I had often tried to imagine the nervous condition and horror of the souls of the men, withering away with fear and expectation. left upon the earth when these awful calami- ties were at hand. and my imagination would not respond to my expectations and my hopes. Un that eventful Sunday after- familiar with the texts of the Xew lesta- the dissolution of the world. the darkening moon and the stars dropping from their noon I knew it all: the memory of it is with me now. and. like a second soul. will be mine till for me time shall be no more. XX' li ll

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