clothed with vegetation to the summit of the hills.
Going on shore, I walked up a pretty path which leads to the highest point of
the island on which the town is situated, where there is a telegraph station and a
magnificent view. Below lies the little town, with its neat red-tiled white houses
and the thatched cottages of the natives, bounded on one side by the old
Portuguese fort. Beyond, about half a mile distant, lies the larger island in the
shape of a horseshoe, formed of a range of abrupt hills covered with fine forest
and nutmeg gardens; while close opposite the town is the volcano, forming a
nearly perfect cone, the lower part only covered with a light green bushy
vegetation. On its north side the outline is more uneven, and there is a slight
hollow or chasm about one-fifth of the way down, from which constantly issue
two columns of smoke, as well as a good deal from the rugged surface around
and from some spots nearer the summit. A white efflorescence, probably
sulphur, is thickly spread over the upper part of the mountain, marked by the
narrow black vertical lines of water gullies. The smoke unites as it rises, and
forms a dense cloud, which in calm, damp weather spreads out into a wide
canopy hiding the top of the mountain. At night and early morning, it often rises
up straight and leaves the whole outline clear.
It is only when actually gazing on an active volcano that one can fully realize
its awfulness and grandeur. Whence comes that inexhaustible fire whose dense
and sulphurous smoke forever issues from this bare and desolate peak? Whence
the mighty forces that produced that peak, and still from time to time exhibit
themselves in the earthquakes that always occur in the vicinity of volcanic
vents? The knowledge from childhood of the fact that volcanoes and earthquakes
exist, has taken away somewhat of the strange and exceptional character that
really belongs to them. The inhabitant of most parts of northern Europe sees in
the earth the emblem of stability and repose. His whole life-experience, and that
of all his age and generation, teaches him that the earth is solid and firm, that its
massive rocks may contain water in abundance, but never fire; and these
essential characteristics of the earth are manifest in every mountain his country
contains. A volcano is a fact opposed to all this mass of experience, a fact of so
awful a character that, if it were the rule instead of the exception, it would make
the earth uninhabitable a fact so strange and unaccountable that we may be sure
it would not be believed on any human testimony, if presented to us now for the
first time, as a natural phenomenon happening in a distant country.
The summit of the small island is composed of a highly crystalline basalt;
lower down I found a hard, stratified slatey sandstone, while on the beach are
huge blocks of lava, and scattered masses of white coralline limestone. The