Going on shore, I walked up a pretty path which leads
to the highest point of the island on which the town is
situated, where there is a telegraph station and a magnificent
view. Below lies the little town, with its neat red-
tiled white houses and the thatched cottages of the natives,
bounded on one side by the old Portuguese fort. Beyond,
about half a mile distant, lies the larger island in the
shape of a horseshoe, formed of a range of abrupt hills
covered with fine forest and nutmeg gardens; while close
opposite the town is the volcano, forming a nearly perfect
cone, the lower part only covered with a light green bushy
vegetation. On its north side the outline is more uneven,
and there is a slight hollow or chasm about one-fifth of the
way down, from which constantly issue two columns of
smoke, as well as a good deal from the rugged surface
around and from some spots nearer the summit. A white
efflorescence, probably sulphur, is thickly spread over the
upper part of the mountain, marked by the narrow black
vertical lines of water gullies. The smoke unites as it
rises, and forms a dense cloud, which in calm damp weather
spreads out into a wide canopy hiding the top of the
mountain. At night and early morning it often rises up
straight and leaves the whole outline clear.
I t is only when actually gazing on an active volcano
that one can fully realize its awfulness and grandeur.
Whence comes that inexhaustible fire whose dense and
sulphureous smoke for ever issues from this bare and desolate
peak ? Whence the mighty forces that produced that
peak, and still from time to time exhibit themselves in the
earthquakes that always occur in the vicinity of volcamc
vents? The knowledge from childhood, of the fact that
volcanoes and earthquakes exist, has taken away somewhat
of the strange and exceptional character that really belongs
to them. The inhabitant of most parts of northern Europe,
sees in the earth the emblem of stability and repose. His
whole life-experience, and that of all his age and generation,
teaches him that the earth is solid and firm, that its
massive rocks may contain water in. abimdance but nevey
fire; and these essential characteristics of the earth are
manifest in every mountain his country contains. A
volcano is a fact opposed to all this mass of experience, a
fact of so awful a character that, if it were the rule instead
of the exception, it would make the earth uninhabitable;
a fact so strange and unaccountable that we may be sure
it would not be believed on any human testimony, if presented
to us now for the first time, as a natural phenomenon
happening in a distant country.
The summit of the small island is composed of a highly
crystalline basalt; lower down % found a hard stratified
slaty sandstone, while on the beach are huge blocks of lava,
and scattered masses of white coralline limestone. The
larger island has coral rock to a height of three or four