to giVe up the point; and having prevailed on one of the
guides and muleteers to- accompany us, we proceeded up the
mountain. As we advanced in height, the wind and the rain
becafne more violent. We reached a plain, of which we
eould perceive no limit, whose surface was strewed over with
huge unshapen masses of lava, which had probably been
hurled from the crater on the summit of the peak. The muleteers,
after having endeavoured in vain to induce us, first by
persuasion and then by threats, to turn the heads of the '
mules down the hill, thought fit to desert us. The thermometer
was now down to 36°; and the mules became as obstinate
and refractory as their drivers, who had just left us. It
blew indeed so very strong, that they were literally unable to
proceed. Dr. Gillan and his mule were carried to the brink
of a precipice, where the beast luckily fell, or both must
inevitably have perished. We now dismounted and, tying
our mules together, endeavoured to walk along the bottom of
a valley that seemed to lead to the foot of the great cone;
but the surface being entirely strewed over with pumice
stones, we sunk to the ankle at every step ; and the dust and
sulphureous smell were equally obnoxious and intolerably
suffocating. We now perceived that every hope must be
abandoned of making farther progress. The thermometer
was down to 30°. The storm continued to increase, and to
such a degree of violence, as to oblige us to return to the spot
where we had passed the night. Having here dried our
clothes and taken some refreshment, we remounted and in
the course of five hours, in the midst of the heaviest rain I
ever experienced, reached Oratava where not a drop of
7
rain had fallen. In the evening one of the English merchants
entertained us with a ball, to console us in some degree tot
our recent disappointment.
The descent of the mercury in the barometer indicated the
height of that part of the mountain where we passed the night
to be 6030 feet, a n d the valley of pumice stone and ashes
might perhaps be 2500 feet higher. The whole height of the
peak from the plain of Oratava, according to the best observations,
is from 13,000 to 14,000 feet. Though this elevation
in the latitude of the peak is greater than what is required
on continental situations, under the same parallel, to
produce perpetual congelation, yet as it rises immediately
from the plain and is closely surrounded by the sea, the
snow remains on its summit only from November to April inclusive.
At the base of the uppermost cone are large caverns,
into-which, at the spring of the year, the peasantry roll
masses of ice and snow ; and from hence the island is supplied
with ice the whole summer.
We were not more successful in gratifying curiosity on
another point, which was one of the objects of our journey,
namely, that of visiting some of the caverns in which the
original inhabitants of the island were accustomed to deposit
their dead. Most of the English gentlemen assured us that
they had seen such bodies, but we were not fortunate enough
to meet with any who could point out the exact situation of
the caverns ; and all our inquiries of the natives ended only
in a string of contradictions: not that they meant to deceive
us, but the traveller who asks much of simple and uninformed