IN THE RUINS OF ST. PIERRE.
In the Ruins of St. Pierre. By F. S. Sterne-Fadelle, B.-es-S. (A. R. Righton, Roseau, Dominica. is. 6d.)—The author of this little pamphlet takes us with him on a voyage from Dominica to Martinique. He tells us something about the contests between French and English in past times, and then gives a vivid descrip- tion of the desolation caused by the eruption of Mont St. Pelee. Pelee, like Vesuvius, had been confidently pronounced to be extinct. There were not a few curious things to be seen. Here and there something escaped, a pair of oars, for instance, lying wholly uninjured by a mass of charred timber. Nature, too, has begun her work of repairing, or at least hiding, the desolation. The traveller saw some "banana trees already sprouting straight out of the volcanic stuff, and green blades appearing on some of the hills well within the line of fire." There was to be seen a very well defined line between the city and the higher ground sur- rounding it, the former being so absolutely destroyed that there was but one survivor, and he an inmate of the jail, while the hills escaped entirely.
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