.

On the 22d of October, 1867, we returned to Pichincha with another
guide, and entered the crater by a different route. Manuel, our Indian,
led us to the south side, and over the brink we went. We were not long
in realizing the danger of the undertaking. Here the snow concealed an
ugly fissure or covered a treacherous rock (for nearly all the rocks are
crumbling); there we must cross a mass of loose sand moving like a
glacier down the almost vertical side of the crater; and on every hand
rocks were giving way, and, gathering momentum at each revolution, went
thundering down, leaping over precipices, and jostling other rocks,
which joined in the race, till they all struck the bottom with a deep
rumbling sound, shivered like so many bombshells into a thousand pieces,
and telling us what would be our fate it we made a single misstep. We
followed our Indian in single file, keeping close together, that the
stones set free by those in the rear might not dash those below from
their feet; feeling our way with the greatest caution, clinging with our
hands to snow, sand, rock, tufts of grass, or any thing that would hold
for a moment; now leaping over a chasm, now letting ourselves down from
rock to rock; at times paralyzed with fear, and always with death
staring us in the face; thus we scrambled for two hours and a half, till
we reached the bottom of the crater.

Here we found a deeply-furrowed plain, strewn with ragged rocks, and
containing a few patches of vegetation, with half a dozen species of
flowers. In the centre is an irregular heap of stones, two hundred and
sixty feet high by eight hundred in diameter. This is the cone of
eruption--its sides and summit covered with an imposing group of vents,
seventy in number, all lined with sulphur and exhaling steam, black
smoke, and sulphurous gas. The temperature of the vapor just within the
fumarole is 184 deg., water boiling beside it at 189 deg.. The central vent, or
chimney, gives forth a sound like the violent bubbling of boiling water.
As we sat on this fiery mount, surrounded by a circular rampart of
rocks, and looked up at the immense towers of dark dolerite which ran up
almost vertically to the height of twenty-five hundred feet above us,
musing over the tremendous force which fashioned this awful
amphitheatre--spacious enough for all the gods of Tartarus to hold high
carnival--the clouds which hung in the thin air around the crest of the
crater pealed forth thunder