Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/705

Rh ashes and hot mud were thrown over the wooded valley-wall. Between the grim trunks, which are so brittle that they crumble at the slightest push, and which offer not the least of the obstacles to our descent, the ground is covered with ejected matters and pebbles, with here and there some plant growing in the interstices. In the bottom of the valley flows a warm, steaming stream, which is fed by little brooks rushing down on every side, foaming between the blocks of stone. Most of these affluents run with colored water—one blue, another yellow, a third milk-white, a fourth maroon, etc., according to the mineral constituents which it holds in suspension or solution. At many places aqueous and sulphurous vapors issue from the ground as if from the valves of a steam-engine, and here and there is a steaming basin from which escape tumultuous blasts of gas. The bed of the stream is beset with great bowlders, over which we have to find our way with much difficulty and some danger by springing from one to another. Finally we reach the edge of the boiling lake in a state of extreme exhaustion.

A glance into the infernal caldron that lies before us informs us that we are standing here at the mouth of a still active volcano. The basin of the lake lies in the midst of a deep, steeply descending cup, the crater, to which two streams come from the north. One of the streams brings cold chalybeate water, and runs by the basin to unite with its warm effluent; the other, bringing warm water, empties into the boiling lake. On the south side of the crater gaps an opening in the wall which constitutes the outlet of the lake. It is of quite recent origin, for it dates only from the great catastrophe of 1880, in which the valley-forest was destroyed. Previous to this time the area of the lake was about three times as great as it is now, when its diameter is only about forty-five paces. In the center of the basin is a geyser issuing from a mound of black mud, which, when we observed it, spouted to a height of some fifteen or twenty feet. Other observers have given it a height of from sixty to a hundred feet. In the interior of the mud-heap of the geyser we remarked, whenever the wind blew the steam away, a kind of tufaceous structure, of which we were not able to learn anything more exactly. Great masses of sulphurous gas escape over the whole surface of the basin from the black, muddy fluid, and keep up a loud roaring and humming, which only heightens the dismal aspect of the whole place.

This was the end of our excursion into the interior of Dominica.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Kosmos.