the
two French islands lay quiet, and left their English brother to do
the work. On the same day a stream of lava rushed down from the
mountain, reached the sea in four hours, and then all was over. The
earthquakes which had shaken for two years a sheet of the earth's
surface larger than half Europe were stilled by the eruption of this
single vent.

No wonder if, with such facts on my memory since my childhood, I
looked up at that Souffriere with awe, as at a giant, obedient
though clumsy, beneficent though terrible, reposing aloft among the
clouds when his appointed work was done.

The strangest fact about this eruption was, that the mountain did
not make use of its old crater. The original vent must have become
so jammed and consolidated, in the few years between 1785 and 1812,
that it could not be reopened, even by a steam-force the vastness of
which may be guessed at from the vastness of the area which it had
shaken for two years. So when the eruption was over, it was found
that the old crater-lake, incredible as it may seem, remained
undisturbed, as far as has been ascertained. But close to it, and
separated only by a knife-edge of rock some 700 feet in height, and
so narrow that, as I was assured by one who had seen it, it is
dangerous to crawl along it, a second crater, nearly as large as the
first, had been blasted out, the bottom of which, in like manner, is
now filled with water. I regretted much that I could not visit it.
Three points I longed to ascertain carefully--the relative heights
of the water in the two craters; the height and nature of the spot
where the lava stream issued; and lastly, if possible, the actual
causes of the locally famous Rabacca, or 'Dry River,' one of the
largest streams in the island, which was swallowed up during the
eruption, at a short distance from its source, leaving its bed an
arid gully to this day. But it could not be, and I owe what little
I know of the summit of the Souffriere principally to a most
intelligent and gentleman-like young Wesleyan minister, whose name
has escaped me. He described vividly as we stood together on the
deck, looking up at the volcano, the awful beauty of the twin lakes,
and of the clouds which, for months together, whirl in and out of
the cups in fantastic shapes before the eddies of the trade-wind.

The day after the explosion, 'Black Sunday,' gave a proof of, though
no measure of, the enormous for