472 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



called by its Carib inbabifants. It consists really of two islmds, Guadeloupe 

 proper, called also Bas>ie- Terre from its leeward position, and the eastern section 

 which, though the smaller of the two, takes the name of Grande- Terre because it 

 presents a greater extent of arable land. The Rivière Salée, as the intervening 

 channel is called, varies in width from about 100 to 400 feet, and is navigable 

 for vessels drawing 7 or 8 feet of water. It might be converted into a deep 

 canal accessible to sea-going ships by removing the bar at the southern 

 extremity, and improving the channel at the northern entrance. The passage, 

 however, would have long ago been closed by the coral -builders but for the 

 scouring action of the tides. 



Despite its name Basse-Terre (" Low Land ") is really high ground, with four 

 lofty igneous cones: — Grosse-Montagne (2,370 feet), in the north-west, whence 

 radiate various ridges nearly at the same elevation ; the Deux Mamelles (2,540), with 

 La Soufrière (4,900) farther south, and towards the southern extremity the Caraïbe 

 (2,300), with Houelmont (1,800). These various masses merge in an irregular 

 sinuous range, whose watershed has been incessantly modified by the erosive action 

 of the tropical rains. 



Igneous energy is still active at one or two points, such as Bouillante at tJie 

 foot of the Mamelles on the Caribbean Sea, where little craters in the sands emit 

 hot vapours ; even in the sea gas bubbles rising from the marine bed are often 

 seen bursting on the surface. The supreme crest of La Soufrière stands in the 

 centre of a plain which was probably a crater and which still discharges sulphur- 

 etted hydrogen. A circle of crests encloses the Petite Plaine, a depression which 

 also represents an old crater. Gas continues to escape from a deep fissure in the 

 centre, which contains the sulphur deposits whence the mountain takes its name. 

 Numerous thermal springs flow from the outer slopes. 



The whole surface of Grande-Terre is strewn with mamelons, or rounded knolls, 

 averaging from 100 to 130 feet in height, and consisting, like the fringing reefs, 

 of calcareous conglomerates full of shells and fossil corals like those still living 

 in the surrounding waters, Grande- Terre culminates in a hill on the south side 

 about 450 feet high. 



Hound about Grande-Terre and here and there on the coast of Basse-Terre 

 the land is encroaching seawards, thanks to the incessant action of the coral- 

 builders. Besides the living reefs, calcareous rocks continue to grow, deriving 

 from conglomerate sands and minute particles of shells, in which objects of all 

 kinds become embedded and petrified. These are the so-called " maçonne-bon- 

 dieu " rocks, from which the inhabitants draw the stone for their buildings 

 without ever exhausting the supply. 



It was in a rock of this kind on the east coast of Grande-Terre that were dis- 

 covered the Carib skeletons which became famous in the history of contemporary 

 geology under the name of anthropolites. The first of these skeletons, found in 

 1805, was captured by the Ei?glish privateers, and deposited in the British 

 Museum, and since transferred to the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. 

 Another, now in the Paris Museum, wears a neck ornament similiar to that still 



