A NATURALIST'S EXCURSION IN DOMINICA. 687 



ing ashes and hot mud were thrown over the wooded valley-wall. 

 Between the grim trunks, which are so brittle that they crumble at 

 the slightest push, and which offer not the least of the obstacles to 

 our descent, the ground is covered with ejected matters and pebbles, 

 with here and there some plant growing in the interstices. In the 

 bottom of the valley flows a warm, steaming stream, which is fed by 

 little brooks rushing down on every side, foaming between the blocks 

 of stone. Most of these affluents run with colored water — one blue, 

 another yellow, a third milk-white, a fourth maroon, etc., according to 

 the mineral constituents which it holds in suspension or solution. At 

 many places aqueous and sulphurous vapors issue from the ground as 

 if from the valves of a steam-engine, and here and there is a steaming 

 basin from which escape tumultuous blasts of gas. The bed of the 

 stream is beset with great bowlders, over which we have to find our 

 way with much difficulty and some danger by springing from one to 

 another. Finally we reach the edge of the boiling lake in a state of 

 extreme exhaustion. 



A glance into the infernal caldron that lies before us informs us 

 that we are standing here at the mouth of a still active volcano. The 

 basin of the lake lies in the midst of a deep, steeply descending cup, 

 the crater, to which two streams come from the north. One of the 

 streams brings cold chalybeate water, and runs by the basin to unite 

 with its warm effluent ; the other, bringing warm water, empties into 

 the boiling lake. On the south side of the crater gaps an opening in 

 the wall which constitutes the outlet of the lake. It is of quite recent 

 origin, for it dates only from the great catastrophe of 1880, in which 

 the valley-forest was destroyed. Previous to this time the area of the 

 lake was about three times as great as it is now, when its diameter is 

 only about forty-five paces. In the center of the basin is a geyser 

 issuing from a mound of black mud, which, when we observed it, 

 spouted to a height of some fifteen or twenty feet. Other observers 

 have given it a height of from sixty to a hundred feet. In the inte- 

 rior of the mud-heap of the geyser we remarked, whenever the wind 

 blew the steam away, a kind of tufaceous structure, of which we were 

 not able to learn anything more exactly. Great masses of sulphurous 

 gas escape over the whole surface of the basin from the black, muddy 

 fluid, and keep up a loud roaring and humming, which only heightens 

 the dismal aspect of the whole place. 



This was the end of our excursion into the interior of Dominica. 

 — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Kosmos. 



