THE WEST INDIAN DISASTER
(To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR." J
Sr.n,—In your issue of May 17th, which has just reached me, you say in the "News of the Week" that "St. Lucia, Dominica :italics mine], and Barbados are drowned in a. heavy rain of dust." As an inhabitant of Dominica, I feel obliged to call yorm attention to a slight misstatement—namely, that Dominica, being situated to the north of Martinique, has had absolutely no heavy fall of dust, and except for the occa- sional distant booming as of a battle at sea, and for a few refugees who landed here and were duly cared for, we should scarcely have known that the catastrophe of St. Pierre had been enacted. Our two sulphur springs are quite normal, and our Boiling Lake is accustomed to swallow the water in its basin and to eject it again. Even the slight com- motion caused by throwing a stone into its bed will often cause the water which was absent to spout up and fill the lake basin again, so that its emptiness at present causes us in this island no uneasiness. In the article entitled "The West Indian Disaster" you say, amongst other things : "They [the volcanic outbursts] will impair it [the prosperity of the West Indies] a little, because they will check the investment of capital there." I hope those interested in such investments may see this letter, for should they not do so they may imagine that Dominica is suffering from the effects of the eruption in Martinique. As I said before, this is not the case in any form or shape. We are no more affected here than was England when on May 23rd a Reuter's telegram announced that the volcano of St. Pierre-de-Varennes, which had always been considered extinct, had frightened the neighbourhood by rumblings accompanied by tremblings.—
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