The Mountainous Island of St. Vincent

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The Mountainous Island of St. Vincent

Bequia, St. Vincent, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Photographic Print
16 in. x 12 in.
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Framed Mounted

St. Vincent, by 9 miles across and 4048 feet high, wholly of volcanic origin, is much more dissected in its older southern half than in the younger northern half, where eruptions of an active volcano, the Soufrière, took place in 1812 and in 1902. The latter Outburst is described by Hovey as having devastated the northern part of the island with a cover of ashes; but the cover was, in the same year, so rapidly washed away that vegetation was beginning to grow, and within another year crops might be again cultivated.

This observer records that "extensive landslides have taken place on the western side... removing a strip of coast, in places one hundred yards wide... These landslides have left precipitous walls along the shore line, and deep water is found where villages stood and prosperous plantations existed before the eruption... The eastern or windward side of the island is not nearly as steep as the leeward, and landslides have not occurred there as features of this eruption. On the contrary, the windward shore line has been pushed out by the vast quantities of fresh lapilli which have been brought down from the slopes by the rivers and the heavy rains."

It is noteworthy that, as in the case of Martinique above stated, the eruptions of the Soufrière, violent as they appear to have been, produced no significant change in the general form of the island. From this one may infer that a great number of prehistoric eruptions must have followed one another in order to build up the original island before its general dissection began. The charts show the shore line to be fairly well embayed and the headlands to be moderately cliffed; the embayments as charted are presumably diminished from their original size by deltas.

According to Anderson's handbook of the island, the eastern slope, which as in Grenada is longer than the western and probably for the same reason, shows "flat-terraced coastal plains," cut by valleys, and "a narrow rim of comparatively level country skirting the coast," both the terraces and the level coastal rim being explained as "benches of marine erosion." If the failure to mention similar features on the western coast means that they do not occur there, the island would appear to have suffered a slight and intermittent tilting of recent date.

The southern end of the island ), which alone came under my observation from a passing steamer, showed such a relation of valleys and spurs, ending in bays and cliffs, as to warrant the same inferences concerning subsidence and abrasion as those stated for St. Lucia and other islands. There is no submarine bank around the younger northern end of the island; elsewhere a bank is charted with a width of from one to three miles. In spite of the uplifts indicated by the east-coast terraces, the bank falls off on the east at the normal depth of 30 or 40 fathoms. Few coral reefs are charted.