MOUNTAIN SCENERY. 107 



into, as in the Alps; it is only monotonous and fatiquing. 

 The guides encouraged us with the adjuration, ^'- Poco 

 a poco'" (little by little). Finally, with sore and aching 

 limbs, we reached the crater, about eleven o'clock. 



It seemed ensy to topple over the crater walls into the 

 terrific chasm below. There was no warm comf rt coming 

 from the steam below. All was frigidly cold. A slope of 

 black sand descended some fifty feet to an inner edge, 

 broken by rocks of porphyry, where a sheer precipice dropped 

 a thousand feet to the bottom of the crater. Jets of 

 steam spouted from a dozen sulfataras, or sources from- 

 which the sulphur is extracted. The men who mine the 

 sulphur (for Popocatepetl is a vast sulphur mine), live in 

 caves at the bottom for a month at a time. They are 

 lowered down by a windlass, or Malacatc, and the sulphur 

 is hoisted in bags by the same agent. The bags of sulphur 

 are slid down a long groove in the snow to the neighbor- 

 hood of the ranchero. A company, headed by General 

 Sanchez Ochoa, the owner, lias been formed to work the 

 deposit more effectually, anr" to utilize the steam-power 

 lying latent in the bottom of the crater. At the present 

 moment the windlass was out of order, and we were not 

 able to descend. The crater is nine hundred feet deep, and 

 nearly one thousand feet wide at its greatest diameter. Its 

 inner face is marked off in successive layers, representing 

 the successive eruptions of the volcano. 



After a great deal of dangerous and fatiquing climbing, 

 we at length reached the actual summit of the mountain, ly- 

 ing to the southwest, and overlooking the State of Morelos, 

 seven hundred feet higher than our resting place on the 

 edge of the crater. We were now 17,523 feet above the 

 sea. From what we could learn we were the first persons 

 to actually reach this highest point, although the Glennie 

 brothers were said to have attained nearly the same height, 



