My Year of Darwin 5/18/2014: Salt and skulls in the Galapagos

  

"One day we accompanied a party of the Spaniards in their whale-boat to a salina, or lake from which salt is procured. After landing we had a very rough walk over a rugged field of recent lava, which has almost surrounded a tuff-crater at the bottom of which the salt-lake lies. The water is only three or four inches deep and rests on a layer of beautifully crystallised, which salt. The lake is quite circular, and is fringed with a border of bright green succulent plants; the almost precipitous walls of the cater are clothed with wood, so that the scene was both picturesque and curious. A few years since the sailors belonging to a sealing-vessel murdered their captain in the quiet spot; and we saw his skull lying among the bushes ." Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle