AN OLD VOLCANO
Descending a little from the ridge just mentioned, we cross a valley with a good many scattered hamlets, and in less than half-an-hour reach the foot of the hill. A few minutes’ pull up a tolerably easy slope, perhaps two hundred feet in height, brings up to the top, at the lowest part of the crater edge; and on reaching the ridge the crater of the old volcano and its lake is before us, or, rather, below us. It is certainly an extraordinary scene. The inner sides of the crater dip down very steeply on all sides to a deep gulf, and here, sharply defined by perpendicular cliffs all round it, except just at the southern point, is a rather weird-looking dark green lake far below us, the water surface being probably from two hundred to three hundred feet lower than the point we are standing upon, and consequently below the level of the surrounding country. The lake, exactly shut in by the cliffs of the crater surrounding it, is not blue in colour, like Andraikìba, although under a bright and cloudless sky, but a deep and somewhat blackish-green. It must look, one would suppose, like ink under a stormy sky or in the shadows of evening.
We sit down to rest and try to take in all the details of this novel picture. It is undoubtedly an old volcano we are now looking down into; the spot on which we rest is only a few feet in breadth, and we can see that this narrow knife-edge is the same all round the crater. Outside of it the slope is pretty easy, but inside it descends steeply, here and there precipitously, to the edge of the cliffs which so sharply define the actual vent and, as distinctly, the lake which they enclose. Looking southwards, the crater edge gradually ascends, winding round the southern side, and still ascending as the eye follows it to the western, the opposite side, where the crater wall towers steeply up from two hundred to three hundred feet higher than it does on the east, where we are standing. The lake we judge to be about eight hundred to nine hundred feet long and two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet wide, forming a long oval, with pointed ends. The cliffs which enclose it appear to be from forty to fifty feet in height, whitish in colour, but with black streaks, where the rain, charged with carbonic acid, has poured more plentifully down their faces. These cliffs are vertical and in some places overhang the water, and from their apparently horizontal stratification are no doubt of gneiss rock. In coming up the hill I noticed a few small lumps of gneiss among the basaltic lava pebbles. The strongest feature of Trìtrìva is the sharply defined vertical opening of the vent, looking as if the rocks had been cut clean through with an enormous chisel, and as if they must dip down—as is the case—to profound depths below the dusky green waters. At the northern end of the lake is a deep gorge or cleft, partly filled with bushes and other vegetation. Southward of this, on the eastern side, the cliffs are still lofty and overhang the water, but at about a third of the lake’s length they gradually decrease in height, and at the southern point they dip down to the level of the lake, so that at that part only can the water be approached. On the western side the cliffs keep a pretty uniform height all along the whole length.
THE CRATER
So steep is the inward slope of the crater walls that we all experienced a somewhat “eerie” feeling in walking along the footpath at its edge; for at a very few feet from this a false step would set one rolling downwards, with nothing to break the descent to the edge of the cliffs, and then to the dark waters below. Yet there was a strange fascination in the scene, and the variety and contrast and depth of the colours would make the Trìtrìva lake and slopes a striking subject for a painting from many different points along its crater wall. When we arrived, the sun, yet wanting an hour and a half of noon, was still lighting up the grey-white stone of the western cliffs, but the shadows were every minute growing more intense as the sun became more nearly vertical. Far below us was the deep green oval lake; above it, the stratified gneiss cliffs with their black streaks, diversified here and there by patches of bright green bush. Then again from their edges sweep steeply upwards the grey-green sides of the crater, culminating in the lofty western ridge opposite to us. And over all was the blue sky flecked with cirrus clouds; altogether a scene such as I have seen nowhere else in Madagascar, or indeed in any other country.
A ROMANCE
After fixing in our minds the view from the north-east, we proceeded southwards along the crater edge to the higher part at the south-east, where the view is equally striking, and the depth of the great chasm seems still more profound. Here we waited some time, while most of our men went down to one of the hamlets in the plain to the east to get their meal, in which quest, however, they had only poor success. On expressing a wish to taste the Trìtrìva water, one of our bearers took a glass, and descending by a breakneck path, went to fetch some water from the lake. He was so long away that we were beginning to feel uneasy, but after a quarter of an hour he reappeared with the water, which tasted perfectly sweet and good. He also entertained us with some of the legends which were certain to have grown up about so weird-looking a place as Trìtrìva. Pointing to two or three small trees or bushes growing on the face of the cliffs near the northern point of the lake, he told us these were really a young lad and lass who had become attached to each other; but the hard-hearted parents of the girl disapproving of the match, the youth took his loin-cloth, and binding it round his sweetheart and his own body, precipitated her with himself into the dark waters. They became, so it is said, two trees growing side by side, and they now have offspring, for a young tree is growing near them; and in proof of the truth of this story, he said that if you pinch or break the branches of these trees, it is not sap which exudes, but blood. He appeared to believe firmly in the truth of this story.
He also told us that the people of a clan called Zànatsàra, who live in the neighbourhood, claim some special rights in the Trìtrìva lake; and when any one of their number is ill they send to see if the usually clear dark green of the water is becoming brown and turbid. If this is the case they believe it to be a presage of death to the sick person.
Another legend makes the lake the former home of one of the mythical monsters of Malagasy folk-lore, the Fanànim-pìto-lòha or “seven-headed serpent.” But for some reason or other he grew tired of his residence, and shifted his quarters to the more spacious and brighter lodgings for seven-headed creatures afforded by the other volcanic lake of Andraikìba.
