J Herbert Welch
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 44
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... The Destruction of St. Pierre. chapter I. The Lesser Antilles are inconspicuous on the map of the West Indies. Stretching between Porto Rico and the northeastern coast of South America in a line that curves like the crescent of the new moon, they are so overshadowed by Cuba, Hayti, and Porto Rico as to attract little or no attention in a hasty scrutiny of a chart of the Islands of the Caribbean. They have played no great part in the world's history, but what little prominence they have had has been the prominence of misfortune. They have been the scenes of bloody conflicts between Spanish, English, and French colonists. They have been pillaged by pirates, devastated by floods and hurricanes, shaken by earthquakes. Despite the fact that they lie bathed in almost continual sunshine, seeming to be very paradises, with their noble hills clad in vivid greens, with their quaint little villages climbing up the slopes, and the soft breath of the tropics fanning them, they are no favorites of Dame Fortune. The term, Unhappy Isles, is one of the appellations by which they are best known to the world at large. But all the catastrophes that the years have heaped upon the Lesser Antilles have been paled into insignificance by the stupendous disaster that visited the Island of Martinique on the beautiful May morning of 1902. Nature gave but little warning of her gigantic outburst. Mont Pelee, rising to a height of nearly five thousand feet on the northwestern coast of Martinique, looked as peaceful and serene a few days before it belched forth its blast of death as it had looked for years. To passengers on steamers that skirted the long line of coast it was merely one of many lofty peaks, just a single feature of an impressive panorama of mountain...