a space of four thousand square leagues, were terrified by a
subterranean noise, which resembled frequent discharges of the
loudest cannon. It was accompanied by no shock: and, what is very
remarkable, was as loud on the coast as at eighty leagues' distance
inland; and at Caraccas, as well as at Calabozo, preparations were
made to put the place in defence against an enemy who seemed to be
advancing with heavy artillery.' They might as well have copied the
St. Vincent herd-boy, and thrown their stones, too, at the Titans;
for the noise was, there can be no doubt, nothing else than the
final explosion in St. Vincent far away. The same explosion was
heard in Venezuela, the same at Martinique and Guadaloupe: but
there, too, there were no earthquake shocks. The volcanoes of the
two French islands lay quiet, and left their English brother to do
the work. On the same day a stream of lava rushed down from the
mountain, reached the sea in four hours, and then all was over. The
earthquakes which had shaken for two years a sheet of the earth's
surface larger than half Europe were stilled by the eruption of this
single vent.

No wonder if, with such facts on my memory since my childhood, I
looked up at that Souffriere with awe, as at a giant, obedient
though clumsy, beneficent though terrible, reposing aloft among the
clouds when his appointed work was done.

The strangest fact about this eruption was, that the mountain did
not make use of its old crater. The original vent must have become
so jammed and consolidated, in the few years between 1785 and 1812,
that it could not be reopened, even by a steam-force the vastness of
which may be guessed at from the vastness of the area which it had
shaken for two years. So when the eruption was over, it was found