knowing that the moon will rise
before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to the two
ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose
hospitality and good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and
determined him to assist in doing the honors of the mountain. The rather
heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies by
half-a-dozen. We who walk, make the best use of our staves; and so the
whole party begin to labor upward over the snow--as if they were toiling
to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.

We are a long time toiling up; and the head guide looks oddly about him
when one of the company--not an Italian, tho an habitue of the mountain
for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle
of Portici--suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing
of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to
descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up, and down, and
jerking from this side to that, as the bearers continually slip, and
tumble, diverts our attention, more especially as the whole length of
the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us
alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downward.

The rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flagging spirits of
the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword,
"Courage, friend! It is to eat maccaroni!" they press on, gallantly, for
the summit.

From tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band of light, and
pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have been
ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white mountain
side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the distance, and
every village in the country round. The whole prospect is in this lovely
state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top--the region of
fire--an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders,
like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from
every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulfurous smoke is pouring out;
while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising
abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are
streaming forth; reddening the night with flame, blackening it with
smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into
the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. What words can paint the
gloom and