able to get there without much fatigue or difficulty.
Involuntarily, I compared this crater to an enormous loaded cannon; and
the comparison completely terrified me.

"To descend into the interior of a cannon," I thought to myself, "when
perhaps it is loaded, and will go off at the least shock, is the act of
a madman."

But there was no longer any opportunity for me to hesitate. Hans, with a
perfectly calm and indifferent air, took his usual post at the head of
the adventurous little band. I followed without uttering a syllable.

I felt like the lamb led to the slaughter.

In order to render the descent less difficult, Hans took his way down
the interior of the cone in rather a zigzag fashion, making, as the
sailors say, long tracks to the eastward, followed by equally long ones
to the west. It was necessary to walk through the midst of eruptive
rocks, some of which, shaken in their balance, went rolling down with
thundering clamor to the bottom of the abyss. These continual falls
awoke echoes of singular power and effect.

Many portions of the cone consisted of inferior glaciers. Hans, whenever
he met with one of these obstacles, advanced with a great show of
precaution, sounding the soil with his long iron pole in order to
discover fissures and layers of deep soft snow. In many doubtful or
dangerous places, it became necessary for us to be tied together by a
long rope in order that should any one of us be unfortunate enough to
slip, he would be supported by his companions. This connecting link was
doubtless a prudent precaution, but not by any means unattended with
danger.

Nevertheless, and despite all the manifold difficulties of the descent,
along slopes with which our guide was wholly unacquainted, we made
considerable progress without accident. One of our great parcels of rope
slipped from one of the Iceland porters, and rushed by a short cut to
the bottom of the abyss.

By midday we were at the end of our journey. I looked upwards, and saw
only the upper orifice of the cone, which served as a circular frame to
a very small portion of the sky--a portion which seemed to me singularly
beautiful. Should I ever again gaze on that lovely sunlit sky!

The only exception to this extraordinary landscape, was the Peak of
Scartaris, which seemed lost in the great void of the heavens.

The bottom of the crater was composed of three separate shafts, through
which, during periods of eruption, when Sneffels was in ac