APPENDIX 



455 



Note 8 (p. 131). 

 The lake of the Grand Etang in Grenada. 



Situated in the centre of the island at an elevation of 1800 feet, 

 this lake is 500 or 600 yards in length, and, as I ascertained by sound- 

 ing in February 1909, rather under three fathoms in maximum 

 depth. Since its depth is placed at fourteen feet in the eleventh, 

 volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (ninth edition), a volume 

 issued in 1880, it is apparent that there has not been much change 

 in depth in a period of at least thirty years. Exaggerated notions 

 prevail with regard to the depth, size, and even altitude of this 

 mountain lake. Although it shallowness has long been known, I 

 came upon, during my sojourn in the island, many coloured people 

 who believed it to be unfathomable. Its circumference would 

 measure barely a mile, yet the lake has been described as over two 

 miles round and " no less than 3200 feet above the sea " (Stanford's 

 Compend. Geogr., A. Keane, West Indies, 1901, p. 409). 



Its aquatic and subaquatic vegetation calls for a few remarks. 

 Whilst a water-lily (Nymphaea ampla) occupies the shallows, a dense 

 swampy belt of tall sedges, chiefly Cladium jamaicense, forms the 

 borders. Arborescent aroids (Montrichardia arborescens), five or six 

 feet in height, spring up in the midst of the Cladium belt, which is 

 fringed at the water's edge by an equisetum-like Scirpus (either planta- 

 gineus or constrictus). Sclerias of more than one species grow in 

 abundance among the low trees at the border of the lake; and 

 clambering over the branches of these trees Dioclea reflexa is fre- 

 quently to be observed, with occasionally a Mucuna that comes near 

 M. altissima, DC, as described in Grisebach's pages. [Specimens of 

 the Cladium from this locality in the herbarium of the Botanic 

 Garden in Grenada are named CI. jamaicense, Cr., on the authority 

 of Prof. Urban. In the same collection the Nymph&a from the same 

 lake is named N. ampla, DC] 



It is considered by Prof. Harrison that the lake of the Grand 

 Etang probably occupies the place of a former crater. Its shallow 

 depth, however, is not in favour of this view. If an accurate survey 

 of the upland region of the island were made it would show that this 

 shallow lake occupies the expanded head of a valley open to the 

 north; and as far as the surface configuration is concerned I doubt 

 if it would be at all suggestive of a crateral origin. I would imagine 

 that the denuding agencies have re-shaped the central mountainous 

 portion of the island to such an extent that the present valleys and 

 mountain profiles have little or no relation with those of the era of 

 volcanic activity. 



The overflow water is carried away by an effluent on the north 

 side, which, according to the level of the lake, varies between seven 

 and fourteen feet in breadth and between ten and thirty inches in 

 depth. If this channel was deepened to the extent of twelve or four- 

 teen feet the lake would be emptied. During heavy rains the level 

 of c : lake will rise a foot in the course of a night. Thus during one 

 nk sit of my sojourn, when 2*60 inches of rain fell at the rest-house 



