ce; 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 after thunder, which,
reverberating from precipice to precipice, were answered by the crash of
rocks let loose by the storm, till the whole mountain seemed to tremble
like a leaf. Such acoustics, mingled with the flash of lightning and the
smell of brimstone, made us believe that we had fairly got into the
realm of Pluto. It is the spot where Dante's "Inferno" ought to be read.

INCA HIGH-ROADS AND BRIDGES.

E. GEORGE SQUIER.

[Squier's "Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the
Land of the Incas" is the source of our present selection. The
author, Ephraim George Squier, was born in Albany County, New
York, in 1821. He studied the aboriginal monuments of New York,
and afterwards travelled and made extensive archaeological
researches in Central America. He was appointed United States
Commissioner to Peru in 1863, and made important studies of the
ancient ruins of that country. We give his interesting account
of the perilous crossing of the Apurimac.]

The great and elaborate highways, or public roads, which the chroniclers
and the historians, following their authority, tell us were constructed
by the Incas throughout their vast empire, all radiating north, east,
south, and west from the imperial city of Cuz