litude reigned around--uninterrupted by chirping of birds, or even the
wheetling of lizards or crickets. Slowly we ambled along--the weather
was lowering and gloomy; there was not a trickling rill of water,
nothing but dull sky above, and lava, always lava below!

My horse, too, was a monster of his species--never shall I forget that
brute; had he been provided with a cocoanut column on each leg, by way
of stilts, he could not have come down harder--ugh! at every other step
on coming to some narrow crevice of the rocks, he would raise his fore
hoofs, and let himself fall, at it were, with a jar that made my jaws
rattle like cracking walnuts with my teeth; it makes me shudder even at
this late day to think of it. I tried to coax him into a gallop with
lash, spur and pen-knife, that he might break his neck, and gratify my
revenge! but no! it was his maiden visit to the crater, and so far as a
letter of future recommendation, he was resolved never to go again.

We journeyed on during seven tedious hours--the great dome-like mountain
of Mauna Loa appearing even to recede as we approached--its smooth, oval
base and sides sloping so easily from the frosted summit as to induce
the belief of the practicability of a coach and horses going up, without
let or hindrance. Almost imperceptibly we had attained an elevation of
four thousand feet, when we came upon a broad plain, extending nearly
twenty miles to the base and flanks of Mauna Loa. Shortly after, a few
light wreaths of steam were blown from the rocky crevices around, and in
a moment we stood on the brink of Kilauea!

"For certain on the brink
I found me of the lamentable vale
The dread abyss that joins a thundrous sound."

We were on the rim of a mighty, depressed circus, walled about without a
break, by precipitous masses of brown and reddish basaltic rocks, and
looking down hundreds of feet, aye, more than a thousand! we beheld with
a bird's-eye glance, a vast frozen black lake, once a huge sea of
fire--now a congealed surface of lava, where you may place Paris,
reserve a nook for New York, and not be pushed for space either!

After infinite toil and peril, we clambered down the steep face of the
wall by a broken pathway, and with some misgivings, planted our feet on
the crunched, crowded and broken slabs of lava, with the ashes
_crickling_ beneath the tread, very like crisp snow, and all closely
resembling a frozen estuary, where the tide had fall