330 Voyage of the Novara. 



at which to mount to the high ground above. At first the 

 path led over the colossal rampart of broken rocks and through 

 the surf, after which came clumps of rushes and clods, in 

 which the former grew, and thence upwards over masses 

 of slag. It was a regular Sisyphean task. On the loose 

 rolling debris beneath the feet, for every five feet forwards, one 

 slipped four backward, so that to climb this height of little 

 over 100 feet, took nearly a whole hour. At last the adven- 

 turous scramblers stood on the top of the island, on a small 

 bare cone of scoriae, whence they were able to overlook a portion 

 of the ground. Dense rush- like grass, as high as a man, 

 thickly covered the entire surface — half-withered, half of a 

 lively green ; here broken short off* by wind and rain, there still 

 standing erect. Further progress was not to be thought 

 of, not even as far as the green clump of bushes which 

 had already been observed from the boat, although it was 

 scarcely a hundred paces distant, on the surface of the 

 declivity, and although a closer examination promised to aff'ord 

 many interesting details as to the vegetation on the island. 

 It would have been necessary to make one's way either through 

 heaps of withered rushes, requiring to be broken down at 

 every moment, or across thick, matted, fresh, slippery grass, 

 in order to get anywhere near the copse that resembled the 

 pinewood. Moreover, owing to the short allowance of day- 

 light that remained, both were for the present inaccessible.* 



• One of the shipwrecked crew of the Meridian, in an article in the Nautical 

 Magazine, for 1854, p. 75, describes at some length the difficulties of access 



