BOILING LAKE OF DOMINICA 69 
as an open grate, and have that shape. Into these 
you can look deep down into black holes, sulphur 
crystals in beautiful golden needles lining throat and 
flue. It required great care not to break through 
the crust in many places. My guide was constantly 
warning me: “Have attention where you make you 
feets |” 
While I was preparing chemicals and collecting 
minerals, my boys were busily cooking our break- 
fast; and they prepared it without fire, too, and so 
expeditiously as to cause me wonder. In the forest 
they had found some wild yams; Frangois had shot 
a few giant thrushes; there were a few eggs remain- 
ing of those we had brought with us. 
Curiously I watched them at their work. Tying 
the yams in a bit of cloth, and tying that to the end 
of a stick, Joseph thrust them into the large boiling 
spring. A few minutes later —I do not know just 
how many—he drew them out completely boiled. 
The eggs were treated in like manner, and lastly the 
birds. Then we withdrew to the shade of a near 
clump of balisiers, on the bank of a clear spring, 
plucked a few leaves for plates, for cups, for napkins, 
for protection from the damp earth as we sat down, 
sprinkled our curiously-cooked food with pepper and 
salt, and feasted merrily, though half strangled by 
the sulphur fumes. In watching this cooking process, 
I could not but think of our own wonderful geysers 
in the Yellowstone, where explorers caught trout in a 
stream and cooked them in a boiling spring, without 
removing the fish from the hook or changing their 
own positions. 
Then we turned our backs upon this valley of won- - 
