Includes a map of the Caribbean island nation of Dominica. Known as the “Nature Island of the Caribbean” because of its rugged volcanic landscape (with lush rainforests, vertiginous mountain streams & numerous hot springs), it has few white sand beaches and thus has less of a well-developed luxury tourist industry. It attracts more outdoor adventure/nature tourists, people who like to hike volcanoes, stay in jungle lodges or scuba dive around tropical reefs. The handy (8 x 10) single-sided cardstock features a terrain & transport map of Dominica, a 290-square mile island in the Windward chain of the Lesser Antilles, in the southeastern part of the Caribbean region (provenance & date unknown); and a most excellent pictorial book for Dominica (pronounced Dom-in-EEK-a), an island with a unique history. Due to its forbidding mountainous landscape, it was late to be settled & developed by the dominant European colonial powers. The French were the first to settle permanently, then the English took over. But unlike other islands, the native Carib people (now known as the Kalinago) were not destroyed. They number about 3,000 today (roughly 4% of the island’s population of 70,000). Because of its mountainous jungle terrain, Dominica wasn’t well-suited for the sugar-plantation economy favored by the European colonists. To this day, it has an economy built around other agriculture (bananas, aloe vera, cut flowers), financial services & eco-tourism. The 9 x 9, 96-page volume (entitled “Dominica/Land of Water” contains over 100 beautiful color photographs of this beautiful, special place, home to many waterfalls on its numerous rivers, and the world’s largest hot springs (the Boiling Lake), an island still being shaped by its volcanic-geothermal activity, and also rich in nearby sealife (from Jonathan Bird Photography, 2004).