The Cumber Poidy Lake. (from a letter by Elisha Flee of Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet) "The waterfall fills this cavern with a wild, cold smell. I am ravished by it. My head is invaded by its fierce thunder. My senses are chilled. It is as if someone has entered my skull and is blowing freezing air at the world through the backs of my eyes. I nearly cry out. Through my tears I am careful. The floor of the vast cave is almost entirely covered with water. I am standing on a narrow path which runs around the edge. The path is slippery. I don't want to fall in. Behind the waterfall this path rears up into a short flight of stairs. The stairs were cut into the rock centuries ago when these caves were a prison. They lead to a large chamber and the homes of the Cumber Poidy Governor and a few other families. The Governor is apart from his people. An unusual segregation. Next to my feet the rock path plunges into the water quickly. The bottom of the lake disappears as suddenly as the naked boy who dives in from a spur of rock near the waterfall. Is he drowned? No, his sleek head comes to the surface and he wipes the water out of his eyes with the palms of his hands. His head is a dark blob. The light down here is bad. A narrow flood of sunlight comes down with the waterfall as it topples from the surface world into this cave. There are bats with green mites glowing in their fur. A few luminous moths. No other illumination. A bat swoops past the boy's head and gives him, for one moment, a radiant green ear. Fires, lit for warmth or light, would die in the wet spray. The air is more water than air. The lake is morose, dark. Its surface bristles with falling spray. The walls bleed moisture. The falls crash and the bubbles seethe outward from its wet plumage. They hiss. They are the colour of frost. The boy strikes out. I bathed in the lake yesterday. I know what it is like. There seems to be nothing beneath his feet but dark water. When I swam I was afraid. I was waiting for something to rise up from the blackness and close its teeth around my middle. I was waiting for some hungry cave hippopotomus to take me casually for its dinner. The Poidians tried to reassure me. There are no animals in this lake except white fish. They brush against your leg but they will not harm you. Very deep there are fish with long, thin teeth, but even then they are too small to give you anything except a nip. I was still scared. I was afraid that there was no bottom to this lake and that I would fall into it. The bouyancy of the water would somehow fail and I would fall as if into a hole. Away near the far wall there is a small whirlpool. Harmless. It will not hurt you. Somewhere far below, we think there is a tunnel, a pit, sucking water. The water is bourne swiftly away from the lake into this buried river. If that tunnel is ever blocked, the lake will swell through the caves and the life of this town will end."