"The population of the neighborhood of the mountain is flocking to the city. Business is suspended, the inhabitants are panic-stricken and the firemen are sprinkling the streets and roofs, to settle the ashes, which are filling the air." The letters indicate that evidences of the impending disaster were numerous five days before it occurred. Still another letter says: "St. Pierre presents an aspect unknown to the natives. It is a city sprinkled with gray snow, a winter scene without cold. The inhabitants of the neighborhood are abandoning their houses, villas and cottages, and are flocking to the city. It is a curious pell-mell of women, children and barefooted peasants, big, black fellows loaded with household goods. The air is oppressing; your nose burns. Are we going to die asphyxiated? What has to-morrow in store for us? A flow of lava, rain or stones or a cataclysm from the sea? Who can tell? Will give you my last thought if I must die." A St. Pierre paper of May 3 announces that an excursion arranged for the next day to Mount Pelee had been postponed, as the crater was inaccessible, adding that notice would be issued when the excursion would take place. An inhabitant of Morne Rouge, a town of 600 inhabitants, seven kilometers from St. Pierre, who was watching the volcano at the moment of the catastrophe, said that there were seven luminous points on the volcano's side just before it burst. He said that all about him when the explosion came, there was a terrible suction of air which seemed to be dragging him irresistibly toward the mountain in spite of all his resistance. The volcano then emitted a sheet of flame which swept down toward St. Pierre. There was no sharp, distinct roar of explosion as when a great cannon is fired, but only awful jarring rumblings. He thought that the entire outburst that did all the work of havoc did not last more than thirty seconds. Then there was complete darkness for ten minutes, caused by the dense volumes of sulphurous smoke and clouds of dust and shattered rocks. The entire country all about St. Pierre was turned into a chaotic waste. All the trees were either torn up by the roots or snapped off, to lie level with the ground. The outlines of the town but imperfectly remained. The tangle of debris was such that after the rescuers came, it was with difficulty that the course of streets could be followed. In spite of the horrible surroundings, and the universal wave of human sympathy which had been evoked, looting began almost as soon as relief. As soon as it was possible to land, ghouls began to rob the bodies of the victims. The monsters plied their nefarious trade in small boats. Skimming along the shore they would watch for an opening when troops and rescue parties were elsewhere, then land, grab what they could, and sail away again.