La
Pelée.
285
sometimes on the under surface, and tear the hands. But the barefooted guides stride on rapidly, erect as ever under their loads,—chopping off with their cutlasses any branches that hang too low. There are beautiful flowers here,—various unfamiliar species of lobelia ;—pretty red and yellow blossoms belonging to plants which the créole physician calls Bromeliaceœ; and a plant like the Guy Lussacia of Brazil, with violet-red petals. There is an indescribable multitude of ferns,— a very museum of ferns ! The doctor, who is a great woodsman, says that he never makes a trip to the hills without finding some new kind of fern ; and he had already a collection of several hundred. T h e route is continually growing steeper, and makes a number of turns and windings : we reach another bit of savane, where we have to walk over black-pointed stones that resemble slag ;—then more petits-bois, still more dwarfed, then another opening. The naked crest of the volcano appears like a peaked precipice, dark-red, with streaks of green, over a narrow but terrific chasm on the left : we are almost on a level with the crater, but must make a long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness of stunted timber and bush. The créoles call this undergrowth rasié : it is really only a prolongation of the low jungle which carpets the high forests below, with this difference, that there are fewer creepers and much more fern. . . . Suddenly we reach a black gap in the path about thirty inches wide—half hidden by the tangle of l e a v e s , — L a Fente. It is a volcanic fissure which divides the whole ridge, and is said to have no bottom : for fear of a possible slip, the guides insist upon holding our hands while we cross it. Happily there are no more such clefts ; but there are mud-holes, snags, roots, and loose rocks beyond counting. Least disagreeable are the bourbiers, in which you sink to your knees in black or gray slime. Then the path descends into open light again ;—and we find our-