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.