unt Misery. Only once, and then but
for a moment, did we succeed in getting a sight of the actual
summit, so pertinaciously did the clouds crawl round it. 3700 feet
aloft a pyramid of black lava rises above the broken walls of an
older crater, and is, to judge from its knife-edge, flat top, and
concave eastern side, the last remnant of an inner cone which has
been washed, or more probably blasted, away. Beneath it, according
to the report of an islander to Dr. Davy (and what I heard was to
the same effect), is a deep hollow, longer than it is wide, without
an outlet, walled in by precipices and steep declivities, from
fissures in which steam and the fumes of sulphur are emitted.
Sulphur in crystals abounds, encrusting the rocks and loose stones;
and a stagnant pool of rain-water occupies the bottom of the
Souffriere. A dangerous neighbour--but as long as he keeps his
temper, as he has done for three hundred years at least, a most
beneficent one--is this great hill, which took, in Columbus's
imagination, the form of the giant St. Christopher bearing on his
shoulder the infant Christ, and so gave a name to the whole island.

From the lava and ash ejected from this focus, the whole soils of
the island have been formed; soils of still unexhausted fertility,
save when--as must needs be in a volcanic region--patches of mere
rapilli and scoriae occur. The mountain has hurled these out; and
everywhere, as a glance of the eye shows, the tropic rains are
carrying them yearly down to the lowland, exposing fresh surfaces to
the action of the air, and, by continual denudation and degradation,
remanuring the soil. Everywhere, too, are gullies sawn in the
slopes, which terminate above in deep and narrow glens, giving,
especially when alternated with long lava-streams, a ridge-and-
furrow look to this and most other of the Antilles. Dr. Davy, with
his usual acuteness of eye and soundness of judgment, attributes
them rather to 'water acting on loose volcanic ashes' than to 'rents
and fissures, the result of sudden and violent force.' Doubtless he
is in the right. Thus, and thus only, has been formed the greater
part of the most beautiful scenery in the West Indies; and I longed
again and again, as I looked at it, for the company of my friend and
teacher, Colonel George Greenwood, that I might show him, on island
after island, such manifold corroborations of his theories in Rain
and Rivers.