crupulously clean and quite comfortable, but at that early date and
remote region entirety primitive; I should rather say strictly native
in all its arrangements. The kitchen was innocent of European
suggestion; we ate with chopsticks, and fish from the lake were
spitted and cooked around a fire in a sandy hearth, contrived below
the middle of the room. Eggs were in abundance, but coffee was sorely
missed at our chilly rising. At 9 A.M. we started for the volcano,
getting back at 7 P.M. We landed at the foot of the lava stream and
ascended by it through a picture of desolation. From shore to summit
took us three hours, which confirmed to me a rough estimate of the
height as about four thousand feet. The grade was not severe, some
thirty or forty degrees; but by this time we had a brisk northwest
wind blowing down our throats, and the latter part of the way our feet
sank deep in volcanic dust. At the top the air was very cold, keen,
and rare, but somewhat oppressive to the lungs. None of us cared to
smoke, after eating and drinking, but the view afforded us was
perfect; limitless, so far as atmospheric conditions went. In
appearance the crater differed little, I presume, from others in a
state of quiescence. Smoke and steam poured forth continually, in one
spot in large volumes; while from many places issued little jets, such
as puff from the out-door pipes of a factory, suggesting subterranean
workmen. These were especially numerous from a large mound in the
centre, which our guide told us was growing bigger and bigger with his
successive visits, portending an outburst near. If his observation was
accurate, it goes to show the coincident sympathetic movements which
occur in volcanic regions remote from one another; for this year,
1868, followed one of great terrestrial disturbance. In 1867 two of
our naval vessels had been carried ashore by a tidal wave in the West
Indies; and of two others lying off Arica, Peru, one was dashed to
pieces against the cliffs, while the other was carried over low, flat
ground for a mile or so inland, where her dismantled hull was still
lying when I was there in 1884.

Our starting when we did, as soon as possible, three days after
arrival, justified the Nelsonian maxim not to trifle with a fair wind;
for we just culled the three days which were the cream, and only
cream, of our stay. From our return on the 6th, to sailing on the
12th, there was but one fair twenty-four hours--the rest from