Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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- St. Eustache, a crater of an extinguished volcano,
surrounded by pumice-stone. (Trinidad, which is traversed by a
chain of primitive slate, appears to have anciently formed a part
of the littoral chain of Cumana, and not of the system of the
mountains of the Caribbee Islands.)) Each island is not the effect
of one single heaving-up: most of them appear to consist of
isolated masses which have been progressively united together. The
matter has not been emitted from one crater, but from several; so
that a single island of small extent contains a whole system of
volcanoes, regions purely basaltic, and others covered with recent
lavas. The volcanoes still burning are those of St. Vincent, St.
Lucia, and Guadaloupe. The first threw out lava in 1718 and 1812;
in the second there is a continual formation of sulphur by the
condensation of vapours, which issue from the crevices of an
ancient crater. The last eruption of the volcano of Guadaloupe took
place in 1797. The Solfatara of St. Christopher's was still burning
in 1692. At Martinique, Vauclin, Montagne Pelee, and the crater
surrounded by the five Paps of Carbet, must be considered as three
extinguished volcanoes. The effects of thunder have been often
confounded in that place with subterranean fire. No good
observation has confirmed the supposed eruption of the 22nd of
January, 1792. The group of volcanoes in the Caribbee Islands
resembles that of the volcanoes of Quito and Los Pastos; craters
with which the subterranean fire does not appear to communicate are
ranged on the same line with burning craters, and alternate with
them.
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