CITY OF GHOSTS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 49, 21 November 1919, Page 8

CITY OF GHOSTS

! - O— . • THE SHRIEK OP THE TELEPHONE. i A strange description of St. Pierre, ■ the ruined city of Martinquc, West Indies; Which .was overwhelmed in 1902 by a burst of flame Mout Peleb, is given by P. A. Fenger in his "Alone in the Caribbean," erasing in a sailing canoe. • Tho place is still a city of tlie dead. Mr/ Penger found only ten persons living there.' "At first glance, the extent of the ruins did not seem ercat, but as I ran ill to ihoro I saw that for a milo and. a' half to the northwards broken walls were covered by an inun.dation of green foliage." Ho landed in the moonlight to explore and found that every scrap of wood had disappeared and the look of the place was that of Pompeii. "There was no human sound, and yet I felt tho ghost of' it as I heard the noise of tho sea and knew that.ktho snme sound had mingled for oyer a century with tho sounds of tho cafe,? of the Rue Victor Hu£a where I was now walking." *** Tiiere~-wero no survivors in the town. Every living soul perished. "One man whom I met in Port do Franco told me that ho was talking at the telephone, to a friend at St. Pierre when tho conversation was interrupted by a shriek followed by a silence which brought no answer to his .question. There was no word to'be had from St. Pierre, and tho noise of the explosion which came from over, the hills confirmed the fear that some terrible disaster had befallen tho Bister city."