The rush to aid the sufferers came from all quarters.
Con- gress voted £40,000, and will vote £100,000, and President Roosevelt, acting unofficially, has organised twenty-two Relief Committees, and officially sanctioned the despatch of eight hun• dred and fifty thousand Navy rations to provide for the starving. The Parliament of the Canadian Dominion has also voted £10,000, and all the larger West India Islands have done their best to send help. The British Government alone has declined, partly from a somewhat pedantic adherence to precedent, but chiefly, we imagine, because the Colonial Office was aware that the destruction in our own island of St. Vincent would probably be as great. It is even more complete, though not quite so sudden or so ghastly. La Souffriere, the highest volcano there, has been pouring out lava and scoriae for the whole week, and as the island covers only one hundred and thirty-two square miles—eighteen miles by about seven and a half—only a seventh of it is cultivated, and the volcanoes Traverse it from end to end, the economic destruction is probably nearly complete. Indeed, 'the Colonial Secre- tary of Jamaica recommends that the island should be abandoned, and its population transferred to other parts of the West Indies.
