Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 284
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[Page 284]
passed through the ruins of St. Pierre, all grass-grown and nearly buried these days, and gazed upon some of the grisly relics in the form of charred and lava-baked corpses which still remain. The town was completely wiped out, and people in ships out at sea were burnt by the ashes which fell for sixty miles around. Leaving the car and procuring a guide, we walked the last four miles over rugged mountain country up to the summit, and there gazed upon the crater. The volcano had for years been thought extinct, and the old crater had filled up; but suddenly one morning the whole mountain split in halves and vomited ashes and lava which destroyed practically every soul. I met several people in Fort de France who were the only remaining members of their families; they had happened to be away at the other end of the island when the storm broke, and thus escaped. The crater is quiescent now and is almost overgrown, but memories of the havoc of 1902 are still sufficiently strong to keep the place deserted.
In Martinique was the French cruiser Descartes, the good pal of many a future cruise. She had been lying at anchor one morning when a neutral merchantman, evidently in the pay of Germany, steamed out and rammed her. In the French Navy they have an unconventional method of securing fresh provisions, unconventional at any rate according to our notions. One cannot conceive of a British post-captain or first lieutenant who took pride in his decks and in the appearance of his ship putting to sea with a herd of bullocks teed up inboard; but our Allies regularly steamed out looking like a North Coast tramp. The offi-