202 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



ward.'' I entered the thicket of stunted trees with 

 dense tops, and sat down. As I did so, the whistle 

 of a soufriere-bird, that had emanated from it, sud- 

 denly ceased, and I knew he had seen me and had 

 flown. I waited a long time in silence, but they 

 seemed to have been made aware of my presence, 

 and only the distant murmur of their music came to 

 me from different parts of the slope. Tired of this 

 solitude, I started down the steep declivity. The first 

 step taken beyond the range of my vision as I sat, 

 plunged me into a hole to my neck ; it had been con- 

 cealed by ferns and mosses, and I slowly crawled out 

 through them with painful exertion. 



I found that the surface was cut up into ravines 

 and gullies, starting from the crater-rim. Probably 

 the deepest of them were gouged out by the flood of 

 lava that poured over the crater's edge in that terrible 

 outflow of volcanic wealth. Rain flowing through the 

 loose volcanic ash may have cut the more recent, but 

 it could not have descended with sufficient impetuosity 

 to have hollowed out the deep well-holes and cut those 

 deep ravines with perpendicular walls. Starting from 

 the narrow edge of the crater, they spread out like 

 a fan, furrowing the outer surface of the cone, grow- 

 ing deeper, broader, and gloomier, until lost in the 

 dark recesses below. Over all grew the small trees, 

 densely crowded ; ferns, filamentous yuccas, moss 

 and wild pines covered the earth and rocks in impen- 

 etrable confusion, so concealing the openings to the 

 narrower gullies that it was impossible to ascertain 

 their whereabouts without a very careful examination. 

 It was into this wilderness that I plunged, floundering 

 through tangled masses of branching fern and through 



