ined and the rapidity with which it had cooled.
Here and there a patch looked not unlike the contents of a caldron,
which had been petrified in the very act of boiling; elsewhere the
iridescent lava had congealed into wave-like ridges, or huge coils of
rope, closely twisted together. Again it might be seen in the semblance
of a collection of organ-pipes, or accumulated into mounds and cones of
various dimensions. As our travellers moved forward, they felt that the
lava grew hotter and hotter, and from every fissure issued gaseous
fumes, which seriously affected their noses and throats; till, at last,
when passed to leeward of the lava-river rolling from the lake, they
were almost suffocated by the vapour, and it was with difficulty they
pursued their advance. The lava was more glassy and had a look of
greater transparency, as if it had been fused at an exceptionally high
temperature; and the crystals of alum, sulphur, and other minerals with
which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In
some places the transparency was complete, and beneath it might easily
be seen the long streaks of that fibrous kind of lava, connected with a
superstition of the natives, which is known as "Pile's hair."

* * * * *

Lady Brassey and her companions reached, at last, the foot of the
present active crater, whence the molten contents of the terrestrial
interior are continually pouring forth in a lurid flood. With some
difficulty they gained the summit--to stand, silent and spell-bound, in
contemplation of a spectacle which more than realizes the terrors of the
ancient Phlegethon. The precipice overhung a basin of molten fire,
measuring nearly a mile across. With a clang, a clash, and a roar, like
that of breakers on a rocky coast, waves of blood-red, fiery, liquid
lava dashed against the opposing cliffs, and flung their spume high up
in the air--waves which were never still, but rolled onwards incessantly
to the charge, and as incessantly retired--hustling one another angrily,
and hissing and boiling and bubbling, like a sea chafed by adverse wind
and current. A dull dark red, like that of the lees of wine, seems the
normal colour of the surging lava, which was covered, however, with a
thin grey scum--this scum, or froth, being every moment and everywhere
broken by eddies and jets and whirlpools of red and yellow fire, and
occasionally thrown back on either side by the force and rush o