ung lady, who was among the victims, dated May 3. After describing
the aspect of St. Pierre before dawn, the town being lit up with
flames from the volcano, everything covered with ashes, and the people
excited, yet not panic-stricken, she said:

"My calmness astonished me. I am awaiting the event tranquilly. My
only suffering is from the dust which penetrates everywhere, even
through closed windows and doors. We are all calm. Mama is not a bit
anxious. Edith alone is frightened. If death awaits us there will be a
numerous company to leave the world. Will it be by fire or asphyxia?
It will be what God wills. You will have our last thought. Tell
brother Robert that we are still alive. This will, perhaps, be no
longer true when this letter reaches you."

The Edith mentioned was a lady visitor who was among the rescued. This
and other letters inclosed samples of the ashes which fell over the
doomed town. The ashes were a bluish-gray, impalpable powder,
resembling newly ground flour and slightly smelling of sulphur.

Another letter, written during the afternoon of May 3, says:

"The population of the neighborhood of the mountain is flocking to the
city. Business is suspended, the inhabitants are panic-stricken and
the firemen are sprinkling the streets and roofs, to settle the ashes,
which are filling the air."

The letters indicate that evidences of the impending disaster were
numerous five days before it occurred.

Still another letter says:

"St. Pierre presents an aspect unknown to the natives. It is a city
sprinkled with gray snow, a winter scene without cold. The
inhabitants of the neighborhood are abandoning their houses, villas
and cottages, and are flocking to the city. It is a curious pell-mell
of women, children and barefooted peasants, big, black fellows loaded
with household goods. The air is oppressing; your nose burns. Are we
going to die asphyxiated? What has to-morrow in store for us? A flow
of lava, rain or stones or a cataclysm from the sea? Who can tell?
Will give you my last thought if I must die."

A St. Pierre paper of May 3 announces that an excursion arranged for
the next day to Mount Pelee had been postponed, as the crater was
inaccessible, adding that notice would be issued when the excursion
would take place.

An inhabitant of Morne Rouge, a town of 600 inhabitants, seven
kilometers from St. Pierre, who was watching the volcano at the moment
of the catastrophe, said that there were sev