Now, knowing the case of Mr. Clive, the Englishman, and his guide, Wylie, who were overwhelmed by hydrogen sulfide while photographing Boiling Lake on December 10, 1901, it looks to me as though the rotten-egg smell may play a large part in the killings at Death Gulch, as well as in some poison tragedies of Java. Boiling Lake is at the south end of Dominica Island north of Martinique. There are four solfataras and the scalding lake, the latter near the interior village of Laudat, at the head of a volcanic valley, and four miles on horseback from Roseau, a shore town southwest. When Mr. Clive, Wylie, and Matson—another native guide—looked down at the hot pool, Matson noticed it boiling without vapor, and called attention to the danger. However, they went on to the lake. Matson later reported, “I inhaled something offensive and felt as if I was dying. I ran, and lost consciousness. I came to in a ravine and found Wylie lying where I had left him.” Clive, refusing to leave Wylie, sent Matson for help, but when rescue parties arrived, both men were dead.
At Boiling Lake there was no eruption, no vapor, only the very bad smell. All the symptoms indicated a sudden change in the pool from steam to excessive hydrogen sulfide. And five months later, at Pelée across the channel from Dominica, excessive hydrogen sulfide set off the great explosions.
In view of these phenomena it seems likely that Death Gulch in the Yellowstone also kills with sulfur gas, the odor of which is so strong there. Day and Allen associate hydrogen sulfide with the limited Yellowstone sulfate areas, of small water discharged, and such is Death Gulch. One part hydrogen sulfide in 200 parts of air is fatal to mammals, and it may come up in gushes. Carbonic acid asphyxiates, but it is not a poison and when it is free is so heavy as to mix with air very little. Death Gulch is not a place of lime deposition like Mammoth Hot Springs, where carbonated water decomposes underlying limestone.
Europe was to be the next step in my education. As assistant in petrography and graduate student at Harvard, I was encouraged by Wolff to plan for Heidelberg. There I was to find H. Rosenbusch, who had put system into the infinite series of minerals in rocks. But my journey to Heidelberg began with a geography congress in London and a geology congress in Zurich. These meetings were with such bigwigs as Lord Curzon, Henry M. Stanley, and famous arctic explorers, and I was surprised to find that all these VIP’s looked like ordinary men. Unfortunately for me, this realization came a little late.
Looking for a luncheon beer garden in Zurich, I picked up a small side-whiskered Englishman, and suggested we join a group of foreign geologists in a buffet. “Oh no,” he replied, “no beer. I only want a cup of tea and a biscuit.” So I left him and crudely and youthfully joined the younger men in the beer parlor for sauerkraut and wienies and Munich beer. Later at the opening meeting, the Geological Congress was addressed in French by the famous Sir Archibald Geikie, Director General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland, and the author of “The textbook of geology,” the greatest of geology manuals. He was my pickup, whom I had deserted at lunch time. I had lost the opportunity of a lifetime, for a tête-a-tête with the world’s most famous geologist.
Before going to Munich, Harry Gummeré of Haverford and I trekked through Denmark in a third class carriage amid peasants smoking fearful-smelling tobacco in long china-bowl pipes. Then we crossed to Christiansand in Norway. We traversed the fjords north to Trondhjem by rowboat, in “stoolcars” with little girl drivers. Then we traveled on foot, and everywhere in rain. Waterfalls were so numerous we never wanted to hear of another one. We climbed up to Stalheim from Bergen, saw the Jordalsknut, a magnificent half dome in a vast granite canyon like Yosemite. We rowed around the Kaiser’s yacht in the Nordfjord, and tried to pick him out on deck. We got soaked with days of rain in a backcountry village, and went to the inn, got into bed, and sent our clothing to dry in the kitchen.
The local Norwegian bank looked at our Brown Brothers letter of credit and said, “Nothing doing,” which inspired us to compose a poem:
We’re so happy we don’t know what to do.
We haven’t any clothes to wear,
We’re wet all through and through.