ore; nevertheless, I added, if you persist in going, I will
accompany you." We accordingly started to ascend the cone, which vomited
fire and smoke, taking care to place ourselves on the windward side in
ascending, and after much fatigue we arrived in about fifteen minutes close
to the apex of the cone, after groping amidst the ashes and stumbling on a
vein of red hot cinders. My shoes were sadly burnt, my stockings singed and
my feet scorched; my friend was less fortunate, for he tumbled down with
his hands on a vein of red hot cinders and burned them terribly. My great
and principal apprehension in making this ascent was of stumbling upon
holes slightly encrusted with ashes and that the whole might give way and
precipitate me into some _gouffre._ On arrival at the summit of the cone we
had just time to look down and perceive that there was a hole or _gouffre,_
but whether it were very deep or not we could not ascertain, for a blast of
fire and smoke issuing from it at this moment nearly suffocated us; we
immediately lost no time in gliding down the ashes on the side of the cone
on our breech, and reached its base in a few seconds, where we waited till
an eruption took place from the other cone, in order to profit of the
interval to ascend it also. It required four minutes' walk to reach the
base of the other cone and about twelve to ascend to its apex; on arrival
at the brink, where we remained about two minutes, we had just sufficient
time to observe that there was no deep hole or bottomless _gouffre_ as we
expected, but that it formed a crater with a sort of slant and not
exceeding thirty feet in depth to the bottom, which looked exactly like a
lime-kiln, being of a dirty white appearance, and in continual agitation,
as it were of limestones boiling; so that a person descending to the bottom
of this crater would probably be scorched to death or suffocated in a few
minutes, but would infallibly be ejected and thrown into the air at the
first eruption. I mean by this that he would not disappear or fall into a
bottomless pit (as I should have supposed before I viewed the crater), but
that his friends would be sure of finding his body either yet living or
dead, outside the brink of the crater, within the radius made by the
erupted stones and ashes.

Our guide now begged us for God's sake to descend, as an eruption might be
expected every minute. We accordingly glided down the exterior surface of
the cone among the ashes,