so appeared to be exceedingly abundant. Needless to say,
I sampled these various fruits as freely as discretion permitted, while
I filled my pockets with others to serve as dessert to my dinner. This
meal I discussed, luxuriously reclining upon a thick bed of soft moss
surrounding a spring of deliriously cold fresh water, that came bubbling
up out of the earth in the shade of a thick grove of aromatic pines
which constituted the last belt of timber before the bare soil
surrounding the summit was reached.

Finally, after I had rested long enough to recover in a measure from the
fatigue of my unwonted exertions, I left the scented shadow of the pine
grove and, emerging into the blistering sunshine, manfully set myself to
climb the last three hundred feet of steep, bare ascent that separated
me from the highest point of the island.

The reason for the absolute bareness of the cone became apparent the
instant that I stepped out of the shadow of the pines, for I immediately
plunged ankle-deep in a loose deposit of ashes and pumice-stone that
yielded to my tread and slid away under me to such an extent as to make
progress almost impossible. But I was determined not to be beaten; and
at length, after a full hour's violent exertion, I found myself,
breathless and with my clothing saturated with perspiration, standing,
as I had expected, on the lip of the crater of an extinct volcano. The
crater was almost mathematically circular in shape, of about a quarter
of a mile in internal diameter, and fully five hundred feet deep; the
sides of the cup were practically vertical, and everywhere so smooth
that I could nowhere discover a spot where a descent into the crater
would have been possible, even had I desired to go down into it. But I
had no such inclination; for I could see all that I wished from the
summit, the internal walls being absolutely bare, while the bottom was
simply a lake of stagnant water, apparently not more than a few inches
deep.

But if the interior of the crater offered little or nothing to attract
the eye, it was far otherwise when I directed my gaze outward. The
whole of the island, except the comparatively small strip that was
hidden from me by the spreading rim of the crater, lay stretched out
beneath me like a map, beautifully executed in relief and tinted by the
hand of a master. Its groves, its brakes, its broad park-like expanses,
its rocky glens, its picturesque ravines, its sparkling rivulets,