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.
The water is not always in movement. At certain times the surface is calm and glistens brilliantly under the rays of the sun.
At other times it is violently agitated and boils away, exactly like a big tea kettle. But, instead of the singing that accompanies the ebullitions in the kettle, the boiling fluid in this cauldron is accompanied by the gruffest and most unpleasant detonations. Little waves roll up on the narrow shelf of sandy beach, which is covered with a scum of sulphur.
The boiling lake is the center of the present volcanic activity of Grande Souffrière, or Diabolin, a mountain covering an area of about five square miles. The lake is one of the last vestiges of volcanic energy left to the big mountain, which within the historical period has had no great outbursts.
LAKE CICOTT’S SEVEN-YEAR RISE.
INDIANA PHENOMENON REAPPEARS ON SCHEDULE TIME.
Indianapolis, Aug. 1.—With neither outlet nor inlet that is at any time visible, Lake Cicott, a small body of water in Cass County, has now reached a height which it attains every seven years, and hundreds of acres of fine corn land are covered by several feet of water. The rural mail route, which runs along the lake’s banks, has been abandoned by the carrier, for the water covers it to a depth of three feet and stretches beyond for several hundred yards.
Lake Cicott has been an interesting phenomenon to the people of northern Indiana for many years, but the secret of its rise and fall has never been discovered. It is the only Lake in Cass County and is about one mile wide and about one mile long. The water is clear and cold and perfectly fresh. Its most mysterious characteristic is the fact that it overflows its banks every seventh year. The farmers who own the land upon its banks have become so used to this that they never attempt to cultivate the land in the seventh year, but give it up without protest, as they know it is sure to be claimed by the waters.
The Pottawattomie Indians who inhabited what is now Cass and adjoining counties were familiar with the characteristic of the lake. They believed that its bottom was inhabited by a powerful spirit, which at intervals of seven years caused the lake to overflow. They construed this action as approval of the tribe by the spirit, and watched anxiously for the time to come, for they saw in the rising waters a sure indication that they had done nothing to displease it. The early white settlers became acquainted with the legend and the oldest inhabitant is not able to recall a time that the overflow did not take place when expected.
The water has now reached its highest point, and will soon begin to recede and continue to do so till the old confines are reached. Residents of the locality say that the weather conditions have no effect upon the lake, for its rise in the seventh year takes place regardless of the fact of rain or drouth. Amos Jordan, a veteran of the civil war, who lives on a bluff overlooking the lake, says the only apparent difference between wet and dry seasons when the rise occurs is that the water appears to be colder in time of drouth. What is true of the rise of the waters is also true of their recession, for they gradually disappear regardless of the amount of rainfall in the county.
The phenomenon is explained on the theory that there is a subterranean outlet, which becomes closed in some way and is opened by the pressure of the water when the highest point is reached every seventh year; but this is mere guesswork and nothing has ever been discovered to justify such a theory. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, which owns a number of ice-houses on the edge of the lake, made soundings at different places before the rise began, and found the greatest depth to be ninety feet.
Hundreds more of such clippings have been preserved in a scrap book describing similar phenomena all over the Earth, all of which seem solvable through claims herein set forth, in the combined influences of frictional and volcanic heat, and the occasional contact with outpouring streams from the internal ocean of fresh water.
THE END.