r,
piled up yon Organ-hill, produced the caves of Widderin, the great
crater-hollow of Mirngish, and accommodated us with that brisk little
earthquake which we felt just now. For you know that we mortals stand
only on a thin crust of cooled matter, but beneath our feet is all
molten metal."

"I wish you could give us a lecture on these things, Doctor," I said.

"To-morrow," said he, "let us ride forth to Mirngish and have a picnic.
There I will give you a little sketch of the origin of that hill."

In front of the Brentwoods' house the plains stretched away for a dozen
miles or so, a bare sheet of grass with no timber, grey in summer,
green in winter. About five miles off it began to roll into great
waves, and then heaved up into a high bald hill, a lofty down, capped
with black rocks, bearing in its side a vast round hollow, at the
bottom of which was a little swamp, perfectly circular, fringed with a
ring of white gum-trees, standing in such an exact circle that it was
hard to persuade oneself that they were not planted by the hand of man.
This was the crater of the old volcano. Had you stood in it, you would
have remarked that one side was a shelving steep bank of short grass,
while the other reared up some five hundred feet, a precipice of
fire-eaten rock. At one end the lip had broken down, pouring a torrent
of lava, now fertile grass-land, over the surrounding country, which
little gap gave one a delicious bit of blue distance. All else, as I
said, was a circular wall of grass, rock, and tumbled slag.

This was Mirngish. And the day after the earthquake there was a fresh
eruption in the crater. An eruption of horsemen and horse-women. An
eruption of talk, laughter, pink-bonnets, knives and forks, and
champagne. Many a pleasant echo came ringing back from the old
volcano-walls overhead, only used for so many ages to hear the wild
rattle of the thunder and the scream of the hungry eagle.

Was ever a poor old worn-out grass-grown volcano used so badly? Here
into the very pit of Tophet had the audacious Captain that very morning
sent on a spring-cart of all eatables and drinkables, and then had
followed himself with a dozen of his friends, to eat and drink, and
talk and laugh, just in the very spot where of old roared and seethed
the fire and brimstone of Erebus.

Yet the good old mountain was civil, for we were not blown into the
air, to be a warning to all people picnicing in high places; but when
we had eate