n
was cleaner, healthier, and handsomely laid out. There was in the
upper town a botanical garden and an old Catholic college, as well as
a fine hospital.

Mount Pelee, the largest of the group of volcanic mountains, is about
4,400 feet high. It had long been inactive as a volcano, although in
August, 1851, it had a violent eruption. It is in the northwestern end
of the island, and near the foot of its western slope, fronting the
bay, St. Pierre was built.

The Consuls resident at St. Pierre were: For the United States, T. T.
Prentis; Great Britain, J. Japp; Denmark, M. E. S. Meyer; Italy, P.
Plissonneau; Mexico, E. Dupie; Sweden and Norway, Gustave Borde. There
were four banks in the city--the Banque de la Martinique, Banque
Transatlantique, Colonial Bank of London, and the Credit Foncier
Colonial. There were sixteen commission merchants, twelve dry-goods
stores, twenty-two provision dealers, twenty-six rum manufacturers,
eleven colonial produce merchants, four brokers, and two hardware
dealers.

The whole area of the island, near 400 square miles, is mountainous.
Besides Mount Pelee, there are, further south and about midway of the
oval, the three crests of Courbet, and all along the great ridge are
the black and ragged cones of old volcanoes. In the section south of
the deep bay there are two less elevated and more irregular ridges,
one running southeast and terminating in the Piton Vauclin, and the
other extending westward and presenting to view on the coast Mounts
Caraibe and Constant.

The mountainous interior is torn and gashed with ancient earthquake
upheavals, and there are perpendicular cliffs, deep clefts and gorges,
black holes filled with water, and swift torrents dashing over
precipices and falling into caverns--in a word, all the fantastic
savagery of volcanic scenery, but the whole covered with the rich
verdure of the tropics.

The total population of the island was reckoned at 175,000, of whom
10,000 were whites, 15,000 of Asiatic origin, and 150,000 blacks of
all shades from ebony to light octoroon.

Martinique has two interesting claims to distinction in that the
Empress Josephine was born there and that Mme. de Maintenon passed her
girlhood on the island as Francoise d'Aubigne. At Fort de France there
is a marble statue of the Empress Josephine.

It was just before eight o'clock on the morning of Thursday, May 8,
1902, that the lava and gases of the crater of Mount Pelee burst their
bounds