BOILING LAKE OF DOMINICA. 55 



walls of which were almost perpendicular, where slip- 

 pery roots and hanging lianes only, enabled us to 

 accomplish the ascent. One portion of our route was 

 through a bowl-shaped depression containing a few 

 acres, in which seemed concentrated all the glorious 

 vegetation indigenous to these tropical forests. Hun- 

 dreds and thousands of plants of strange and beauti- 

 ful shapes were massed together in prodigal confusion. 

 Conspicuous among them was the grand tree-fern. 



Those who have seen in glass-house or garden of 

 acclimatization, only, the stunted specimens of this 

 plant, can form hardly a conception of the grandeur 

 of these arborescent ferns in their native homes. They 

 are rarely found in perfect development at a lesser al- 

 titude than one thousand feet above the sea, and it is 

 in the " high-woods " belt alone that they attain their 

 greatest height and perfect symmetry. They love 

 cool and moist situations, revel in shade and delight 

 in solitude. "If," says Humboldt, "they descend to- 

 ward the sea coast, it is only under cover of thick 

 shade." I have seen them in these mountains, in the 

 vegetable zone most favorable for their growth that 

 between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred feet 

 above the sea of a height of thirty or thirty-five feet. 

 Then, truly, were they impressive in their combination 

 of delicately traced leaves and slender stems ; essential- 

 ly children of the tropics. There is sublimity in their 

 expression. There is a suggestiveness of a benedic- 

 tion in those lace-like leaves, which are spread above 

 the head of the observer like outstretched hands, and 

 which only move gently and tremulously, ever pulsat- 

 ing to the slightest breath of air. The light that filters 

 through the cocoa-palm leaves is wonderfully lambent 



