e crater. This is a most important observation and
explains in part the awful catastrophe. This phenomenon is entirely
new in volcanic history.

"I took many photographs, but do not hesitate to acknowledge that I
was terrified. But I was not the only person so frightened. Two
newspaper correspondents, who were close to Morne Rouge some hours
before me, became scared, ran three miles down the mountain, and
hastened into Fort de France. The people on the north end of the
island are terrified and are fleeing with their cattle and effects. I
spent Tuesday night in a house at Deux Choux with a crowd of 200
frightened refugees.

"Nearly all the phenomena of these volcanic outbreaks are new to
science, and many of them have not yet been explained. The volcano is
still intensely active, and I cannot make any predictions as to what
it will do."

CHAPTER XXIV.

TERRIBLE VOLCANIC DISASTERS OF THE PAST.

BY TRUMBULL WHITE.

=Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Other Cities
of the Plain--The Bible Account a Graphic Description of
the Event--Ancient Writers Tell of Earthquakes and
Volcanoes of Antiquity--Discovery of Buried Cities of
which no Records Remain--Formation of the Dead Sea--The
Valley of the Jordan and Its Physical Characteristics.=

In the history of earthquakes, nothing is more remarkable than the
extreme fewness of those recorded before the beginning of the
Christian era, in comparison with those that have been registered
since that time. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that
before the birth of Christ, there was but a small portion of the
habitable surface of the globe known to those who were capable of
handing down a record of natural events. The vast increase in the
number of earthquakes in recent times is, therefore, undoubtedly due
to the enlargement of our knowledge of the earth's surface, and to the
greater freedom of communication now subsisting among mankind.

Earthquakes might have been as frequent throughout the entire globe in
ancient times as now; but the writers of the Bible, and the historians
of Greece and Rome might have known nothing of their occurrence. Even
at the present time, an earthquake might happen in Central Africa, or
in Central Asia, of which we would never hear, and the recollection of
which might die out among the natives in a few generations. In
countries, too, which are thinly inhabited, and where there are no
large cities to