Misery were to fall on too St. Pierre which is not too far from where the last Caribs were wiped out by the European Settlers. Folk stories say that the last Caribs to die cursed the Europeans by invoking Mt. Pele to take its revenge. As fate would have it, in 1902 Mt. Pele blew up in a fantastic explosion with toxic gases and pyroclastic materials (ashes and rocks) which registered temperatures between 2,500 to 5,000 degrees Celsius, killing all 30,000 St. Pierre residents with the exception of 2 people -a prisoner who was in a cell next to the famous theater and another man who was in his cellar. What has been troubling to us is that the mountain had given plenty of warning in two explosions a few days earlier which destroyed plantations but the newly elected Mayor of St. Pierre (a French-born man) refused to evacuate the city or warn its citizens. Since St. Pierre was a huge financial center, plantation owners would lose a lot of money had the city been evacuated and this influenced his decision not to evacuate. Apparently, even though he lived in Fort de France, he and his wife died as well as they were visiting the city on May 8th when the explosion occurred.

Needless to say that the story of this explosion and viewing the few remains and pictures of the aftermath in the Volcanic Museum in St. Pierre has made quite an impression on us. The Volcanic Museum, which we visited on Tuesday morning, is small with a few photo replicates and remaining artifacts of St. Pierre but it provided us with enough information. The city was totally destroyed, only holes left where houses stood. One picture we saw made the city looked like a picture of the moon with holes all over where the basements of houses and buildings used to be. Only a few partial structures were left - those of the thriving theater and part of the fa�ade of the Catholic Cathedral. The thought of all of those people dying in a terrible way and of a beautiful city destroyed is rather haunting.