City Of The Dead

( Originally Published 1905 )

Those that can pity, here May if they think it well, let fall a tear. The subject will deserve it.

Prologue to Henry VIII.

THE island of Martinique will for all time live in history, for in the annals of the world there is no record of a visitation so calamitous and appallingly sudden in its effect as that which destroyed, on May 8th, 1902, the beautiful city of St. Pierre and its people. Beyond denial the island and the people are yet fair to look upon. The negroes even are unlike the blacks of other lands. Their negro-French would be unintelligible in Paris and yet it is the softest, sweetest, most musical speech I ever heard from human lips. It knows no grammar; but it is the very essence of symphony and melody. The natural beauties of the island are, even now, after months of volcanic ruin and torrential storm, a fascinating study. I well remember the morning I ascended the side of the headland and began to get command of a prospect, which, as it then appeared in the morning light and sunshine, the opalescent sea in calm, Fort de France embowered in palms, and the valleys, mountains and picturesque villages in repose, seemed to me the most exquisite view I had ever beheld in my wanderings.

But the dead city of St. Pierre, which was destroyed a few months before my visit to the island by the most disastrous of all volcanic eruptions, looks to-day like what it really is, a desolation dominated by the yet angry Pelee. The morning our party left Fort de France to visit St. Pierre the citizens and planters of the southern end of the island were unconcernedly engaged in their ordinary occupations. Our road carried us through a country painfully sad in the weird melancholy of its memories, and surpassing grand in the ruggedness of its outlines and the beauty of its mountain scenery. Around us everywhere were volcanic boulders and moss-covered rocks.

" Hoary with age, while yet the Greek Was heaving the Pentilicus to symmetry and form

And building on its dome, the glittering Parthenon."

On our right cascades leaping from perpendicular crags tumbled over a confusion of ancient trachyte, purifying from volcanic dust the palm-tree, the breadfruit and ceiba trees covered with pink-white blossoms. Now a laughing stream came rippling on through a charming valley whose sides were shaded by forests and robed with luxuriant vegetation, where curtains of vines festooned the cliffs and precipices that rose from the grand sweep of mountain and hill. Masses of volcanic rock covered with mosses, lichens, orchids and vegetable parasites, draped with vines and lianas, lay around us, tumbled in confusion as if giants threw them in titanic combat. Here also were curious vines from the trunks of which depended to the earth delicate shoots which took root and supported the parent stems. Strange gum trees—" gemmiens" they call them—that rise one hundred feet into the air, yielded their wondrously shaped crowns to the passing breeze. The ashes must have fallen in almost incredible quantities for here and there lay immense heaps soaked with torrential rains.

From Fort de France to St. Pierre, by the road we were now travelling, is twenty-one miles, though by an air line only fifteen. The devastation deepened as we advanced. The branches of the trees were broken off and strewed the ground. The streams which during the rainy season swelled to rushing rivers were almost dry. We entered Morne Rouge, the Newport of the island; [he desolation was appalling. Here was the church of Father Mary, of whom you have heard. Out of the catastrophe of a whirlwind of ashes and six great explosions has come this interesting and brave priest, a man as sweet in heart and brave in spirit as any Daudet wrote about. The famed summer and health resort, its dismantled buildings, princely gardens and plazas, lay under a shroud of ashes. Another mile and the ridge narrowed to a sharp arrete by which was yet standing a tall crucifix. Crosses, with life-like images in iron of our Saviour on them, marked the boundaries of each parish in Martinique. There was a shrine here where fresh flowers were laid by pious hands every morning. We enter the parish of the Grand Reduit and the ravages of fire begin to assume a most gruesome and gloomy aspect. Our road now descends to the valley of the Roxalene, into Trois Ponts, the suburbs of St. Pierre, a confused medley of stones, uprooted trees and wreckage. Over all there broods the silence of the grave, save alone the intermittent break from the wash of the sea. Through a lane walled with ash and volcanic sand we move on. Through the telescopic passage we pass and are coming out when, " Arreter !" (halt!) and we stop. " Your passes, gentlemen," and an armed sentry bars the pass. With us was Colonel Gendron of the French army absent on furlough, who at once produced our permits. The gendarme reads the names, salutes the colonel and asks us to wait a moment.

Presently the captain of the guard appears, gives the military salute to his superior officer and speaks, " Mon Colonel vous etes bien venu; gentlemen follow me." In a few minutes we reach the quarters of the police who are here to exclude any one without a pass from the acting governor of Martinique and shoot every negro ghoul who may enter to loot. "Here, gentlemen, throw up your tent," spoke the captain, "you will be outside the danger line." That afternoon we had for guide, courteously assigned to us by the captain of the guard, a member of the police force who was one of the rescue party which entered St. Pierre the third day after the terrific explosion. We passed over the ruins of the two orphan asylums, the workshop and boys' home of Ste. Anne, the remains of the Lycee and the convent of St. Paul de Chartres, where twenty sisters and a hundred and thirty-three young ladies lie buried for evermore under twenty feet of solidified mud and ashes. The cathedral tower and that of the Lycee were still standing. The hands of the clock on the Lycee tower stopped at 8.10 A.M. They were now pointing to the fatal numbers. From the interior of the cathedral were taken one hundred and fifty bodies of men, women and young girls, scarcely clothed, their flesh tumefied and falling to pieces. Of the eighteen hundred others supposed to have crowded into the building that awful morning, of the officiating priests and their attendants, nothing remained but charred and undistinguishable bones. The church is now but a heap of confused ruins. At the southern end of the Street of Victor Hugo, our guide tells us, they found heaps of decaying bodies, horribly disfigured and showing by the contraction of their limbs, how awful must have been the death agony. While St. Pierre was perishing the Precheur River overflowed its banks, deluging the church, the parsonage and the little town hugging the city. The whole place is now covered with sand and rocks. We passed up Morne d'Orange to the south-west, following the winding road till we reached the plateau of the hill. Here, looking down upon a part of the city, stood, before the fire, a metal statue of the Blessed Virgin fourteen feet high. It must have weighed several tons. It now lay on the ground washed clean by the rains, forty feet away from its granite pedestal. It lay with the head pointing to Pelee, and the direction showed that the blast was travelling straight from the mountain towards the city.

On this plateau was the fort commanding the roadstead; when struck by the blast from the burning mountain its magazine exploded and the destruction of the fort and the death of officers and men was but one act. We picked our way through a heap of confused ruins and entered the depression formed when the Seche River changed its course. The line of fire and the zone of the cleavage of destruction were here clearly defined. We crawled over heaps of debris and got into the Street of Victory. " Here," said our guide, stopping us, " stood a house where we found six bodies, three of them apparently asleep. In a small room lay a young girl who had finished her toilet before the upright mirror. In her right hand she held a Prayer Book, around her left wrist was wound her rosary. No doubt she was just going to mass."

Worn out with exertion and depressed in mind we retraced our steps. On our way to the police quarters we saw in the roadstead the masts of the Rorima still showing above the waters. From the ruins around us no one may reconstruct the city or tell the intimate life of its inhabitants. From our guide we learned that the iron railings of the balconies and the iron fences protecting the gardens were twisted and bent by the whirlwind of fire. The lighthouse was razed and the trees growing in the streets were charred, and showed sandblast erosion on the sides which faced the crater, while the lee sides were still covered with bark. When on May 5th the White River—so called from the iridescence of its waters—which swept into eternity the Guerin family and twenty-five others, hit the sea, the waters withdrew as if affrighted. It was an infuriated torrent hissing in its anger like a monstrous python, and carrying rocks, trees, fragments of houses, dead bodies and smoking mud with it in its devastating rush. All night this river of boiling mud rushed to the sea, and when daylight broke St. Pierre looked with stupefaction on the desolation.

After we returned to our quarters we sat till midnight hearing from the captain of the guard the painful and harrowing details of the cataclysm, and watching the play of fire on the lips and sides of the crater. Lightning was flashing incessantly over and around the crest of Morne La Croix, the highest peak of the mountain, the rising steam formed a cloud tremulous and shifting, and down the flanks of the monster rivulets of red matter, like blood, were streaming. The mountain gave forth a dull glow and the outlines of its summit were visibly thrown out by a fitful, intense and reddish glare.

On my return to Fort de France I was privileged, one morning after mass, to pass a half-hour with the parish priest of Morne Rouge, Pere Mary, who was the last to abandon the pleasant village. He brought with him the brave and faithful remnant which stood by him during the awful days succeeding the death of St. Pierre.

" What, Mon Pere," I asked, " was the actual population of the ill-fated city when the rain of death fell upon it ? In Canada and the States so many and varied were the numbers reported in our journals that even now we do not approximately know the extent of the calamity."

" Well," he replied, " we have very often gone over the figures, and have agreed upon thirty-six thousand. In our diocesan ordo [records] are the names of twenty-seven thousand souls for the city of St. Pierre. Add to this number perhaps three thousand refugees from the neighbouring communes who had fled to the city for safety, at least five hundred sailors, who perished with their ships in the roadstead, the dead of the Guerin plantation, those who dropped dead at Carbet, and were drowned when Le Precheur was submerged in the deluge of boiling mud, and I believe the number of victims will be thirty-six or thirty-seven thousand. I may mention," he continued, "that among these were His Excellency the governor of Martinique, M. Mouttet and his pious wife; Colonel Gerbault, and Madame Gerbault, and many who went from here to view the volcanic phenomena. In this unparalleled holocaust perished twenty-four priests, twenty-eight sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, who attended the orphans and the destitute; thirty-three sisters of the teaching order of St. Joseph de Cluny; and ten sisters of the D'Elivorande, hospital nurses. Of the many professors of the Lycee only five absentees are left."

He was hurrying through the names of the distinguished families that perished in the unparalleled desolation when the half-opened door of the room swung wide, and the Rev. Jean Alteroche, of Morne Vert, near St. Pierre, entered. I would like to describe the appearance and personality of this heroic and devout man, but time presses. He was among the first file which entered the ruined city, and his description of what he saw and experienced was of harrowing, but absorbing interest.

"I am told," he said, courteously bowing himself into the conversation, " that many in America, even priests and bishops, hint that St. Pierre perished for its sins."

I confessed my own leaning in the direction of that opinion.

" Well," he replied, " can you name a city in America that deserves to be spared ?"

I was silent, and with the innate courtesy of the well-bred and cultured ecclesiastic, he relieved me of my embarrassment by directing the conversation into another channel.

" When we entered the city the morning after its destruction," said the priest, "the solitude was oppressive and the ruin appalling. Along the beach steam columns were rising from the hot chocolate-coloured mud which poured down the ravines and river-beds and were flowing into the ocean. The desolation was unparalleled. Frightful sights met my view, all telling of the suddenness of the catastrophe. The atmosphere and volcanic heat were decomposing the dead, and the odour was that of a tropical battlefield after a prolonged engagement. In the ruins of the cathedral, where three priests and two thousand people perished, the smell was overwhelming—a sweet, sickening odour peculiarly the property of dead human flesh, tainting the air. In ten seconds all activity, all life, human and animal, the throb of industry—factories, churches, convents, hospitals, schools—everything, had ceased to exist. We entered the homes of the people and found the dead sitting at the coffee table, a father, his wife and two children, so lifelike that we spoke to them, but alas, the dead are not courteous and did not rise to welcome us. In one place a man had fallen from his chair, his pipe was in his hand and the caraffa of wine on the table was fused at the neck by the heat-blast. We upended it, but no wine came out. Nature did the corking, and unless you break the decanter, which is now in our museum, its wine will be an inseparable part of it. To the south-west of the city, looking towards Morne d'Orange, stood the home of M. Hudon, at whose house I was many times a guest. It was not only a beautiful, but a refined home. Here dwelt M. Hudon, his wife and family of ten. A tasteful, wrought-iron fence protected the lawn and its fountain. We entered from the rear and on the verandah looking to the mountain we found two bodies. They were perhaps watching Pelee when they were struck by the tornado of steam and noxious gases. As we walked out by the front entrance a horrible and agonizing scene was before us. There lay the whole family, a group so sad, so heartrending, that it will forever stand before me. Ten dead bodies in all. Two small children had been running ahead. Neither of them showed any evidence of suffering, but their attitude as they lay indicated that they had been in a hurry. Then came three bodies of men and women, twenty to thirty-five years of age. Behind them was the corpse of Madame Hudon, and beside her was the body of her husband, his arm spread out as if to protect his wife and children."

" Pardon me, Mon Pere," I interposed, " did I understand you aright, that in ten seconds all life perished ?"

"Yes, the instantaneous character of the force projected against the city was like unto a flash of lightning. The whirlwind from the side of the mountain and the death of the people seemed but one act, so quickly did the one follow upon the other. A moment only was given them for thought. The rushing cloud, charged with steam and sulphurous acid, crushed, ruined, blighted, and swept into eternity all—all of that magnificent community of youth and beauty, of virile strength and honourable age."

"But," I interrupted, "if all perished, how was this known ?"

" On the fatal morning, I, with three others from the hill of Morne Vert, witnessed the destruction of the fated city, and after the hurricane of death had passed we saw no human being, though our achromatic glasses magnified thirty-eight diameters."

Pere Mary, who had been summoned to the waiting-room of the presbytery, now entered and joined in the conversation.

"You will bear in mind," he said, "that of the two hundred thousand souls in the island of Martinique only eight thousand of them are whites. The rest are mulattoes, mestizos, quadroons, octoroons, and blacks. When St. Pierre was destroyed there perished about eight hundred pure whites, not including four hundred of the tente-en-ayre, so near to the real white that they can only be distinguished from him by a slight odour, and then only by the creole, or native-born white."

Believing that I was perhaps trespassing on the time of Monsieur le Cure, as the parish priest is so courteously addressed everywhere in this island, I rose to express my appreciation of his kindness, and bid him good-morning. He invited me to return for five o'clock dinner—they take only two meals in Martinique—as he wished to speak to me of Canada, more especially of Quebec and its people.

That evening I bid good-bye for all time to Martinique, and as our boat steamed by the buried city of St. Pierre I looked my last upon its huge grave, and, addressing the dead in the pathetic language of the parish priest of Fort de France who blessed and sprinkled with holy water the ashes covering the victims of the holocaust, I said aloud:

"Beloved and unfortunate beings, old men, children, young men and maidens fallen so tragically, we weep for you; we, the unhappy survivors of this desolation mourn for you. Purified by the peculiar virtues and exceptional merits of this horrible sacrifice you have arisen on this triumphal day of your Lord to triumph with Him and to receive from His own hand the crown of glory. It is in this hope that we seek the strength to survive you."