120 Dr Chamisso 6n the Volcano de Taal, 
the large smoking crater, which forms in it a dreary, naked 
island. 
The lake (the Laguna) is about six German miles in circum- 
ference; it empties itself into the Chinese sea by an outlet, 
navigable now only for small boats, though formerly it could carry 
larger vessels ; it runs with great rapidity, and the length of its 
course is above a German mile. Since the devastation in 1754, 
Taal has been removed to its mouth. 
The water in the Laguna is brackish ; but it isj however; 
drinkable. In the middle it is reported to be unfathomable. 
It is said to be full of sharks and caymans, of which, however, 
we saw none. 
As we were embarking from the Laguna for the island, the 
Tagalese exhorted us to look round us in this haunted place; 
but to keep silence, and not to irritate the spirit by any incau- 
tious, or inconsiderate word. The volcano, they said, showed 
symptoms of displeasure whenever a Spaniard visited it, and 
was indifferent only to the natives. 
The island is nothing but a mass of ashes and sfeoriae, which 
has fallen in itself; and formed the wide irregular crater, which 
creates so much terror. It does not appear that lava has ever 
flowed out of it. From the bank, where a little grass grows in 
scanty spots, and where some cattle are kept to pasture, you 
climb, on the east side, up a bare and steep ascent, and; in about a 
quarter of an hour, reach the edge, from which you look down 
into the abyss as into the area of an extensive circus. A pool 
of yellow, sulphureous water, occupies about two-thirds of the 
bottom. Its level seems to be the same as that of the Laguna. 
On the southern edge of this pool are several hills of sulphur; 
which are slowly burning. Towards the south and east of it, a 
narrower crater is beginning to form itself in the interior of the 
great crater. The arch which it makes surrounds; like the 
moraine of a glazier; the burning hills by which it is produced, 
and rests with both its ends on the pool. The pool boils, from 
time to time, at the foot of the burning hills. 
You can clearly distinguish, in the internal wall of the crater, 
the situation of the differently coloured scoriae of which it con- 
sists, Smoke ascends from some points of it. 
