DOMINICA’S BOILING LAKE.
A NATURAL CURIOSITY THAT WAS NOT DISCOVERED TILL 1875.
Mr. Sterns-Fadelle of Dominica has just published a little book giving some interesting information recently obtained about a curious natural phenomenon in Dominica, one of the Lesser Antilles.
This island is only 291 square miles in area. It was colonized by the Spaniards in the seventeenth century and peopled later by French emigrants, who controlled the island uninterruptedly until the eighteenth century, and its resources have since been exploited by English and French; and yet its natural curiosity in the northern part of the island had never been seen or heard of until twenty-eight years ago.
This can be explained only by the fact that the neighborhood of the boiling Lake of Dominica is difficult of access. The lake was discovered by an Englishman, Dr. Nichols, who organized an expedition to explore the unknown part of the island.
One day his little party were clambering up a mountain. They suddenly came upon evidences of sulphur, and a moment later stood looking down into a crater which was filled with boiling water.
Stifling vapors rose from the agitated surface, rumblings of thunder came from the subterranean regions, and near the center of the little lake, where the water was most violently disturbed, the furious boiling lifted the surface ten or twelve feet above the general level. The lake was constantly fed by several small brooks that poured from the heights above the crater.
Mr. Sterns-Fadelle says that the lake is still boiling. It has been found to be at an altitude of 2,490 meters above sea level. In form it is elliptical.
When it is filled with water it is about 200 feet long and less than 100 feet wide. Its depth is unknown. An attempt to touch bottom was made thirty feet from the water edge, where, at a depth of 195 feet, no bottom was reported.