led up in times past by volcanic
action. For nearly one hundred years there has been not the slightest
sign of explosion and we had grown to class these volcanoes as
extinct.

"Volcanism is still one of the most inexplicable and profound problems
which defy the power of geologists to explain, and one of its most
singular peculiarities is the fact that it sometimes breaks forth
simultaneously in widely distant portions of the earth. A sympathetic
relation of this kind has long been known between Hecla and Vesuvius,
and it is very probable that the Carib volcanoes have some such
sympathetic relation with the volcanoes of Central America and
southern Mexico. At the time of the explosion of St. Vincent other
explosions preceded or followed it in northern South America and
Central America.

"The outburst of Mount Pelee, in Martinique, is apparently the
culmination of a number of recent volcanic disturbances which have
been unusually severe. Colima, in Mexico, was in eruption but a few
months previous, while Chelpancingo, the capital of the State of
Guerrero, was nearly destroyed by earthquakes which followed.

"Only a few days before Mount Pelee erupted, the cities of Guatemala
were shaken down by tremendous earthquakes."

Professor N. S. Shaler, of Harvard University, a world authority on
volcanic disturbances, says:

"Volcanic outbreaks are merely the explosion of steam under high
pressure--steam which is bound in rocks buried underneath the surface
of the earth and there subjected to such tremendous heat that when the
conditions are right its pent up energy breaks forth, and it shatters
its stone prison walls into dust.

"The common belief is that water enters the rocks during the
crystallization period, and that these rocks, through the natural
action of rivers and streams, become deposited in the bottom of the
ocean. Here they lie for many ages, becoming buried deeper and deeper
under masses of like sediment, which are constantly being washed down
upon them from above. This process is called the blanketing process.

"When the first layer has reached a depth of a few thousand feet the
rocks which contain the water of crystallization are subjected to a
terrific heat. This heat generates steam, which is held in a state of
frightful tension in its rocky prison.

"It is at these moments that volcanic eruptions occur. They result
from wrinkling in the outer crust of the earth's surface--wrinklings
caused by the con