242 Contributions to Physical Geography. 



steep, nigged, narrow, or so much intersected with conical 

 loose rock as those in other directions through the same range ; 

 but is much longer, being fully twelve miles in continued un- 

 dulations, so that the line of road (and it is surprising how it 

 could have been first traced out) is disheartening, as well as 

 unsatisfactory ; for imagining that considerable progress has 

 been made, descent and rise alternately succeed ere the long 

 wished-for summit be gained, which occupies at the least six 

 hours to accomplish. 



" The morning having proved fair, seemed, independently 

 of the solemnity of the day (Sunday), to fill our hearts with 

 cheerfulness at the thoughts of making towards the scene from 

 which we expected our curiosity to be so soon amply repaid 

 for the distance we had come. The solemn silence that per- 

 vaded the thicket in our approach to it threw a lambent gloom 

 on the mind ; the noise, however, of the waterfall, bursting 

 suddenly on the ear, soon enlivened our anticipations ; but 

 here again a momentary disappointment supersedes these eager 

 expectations, for, standing on the bed of the rocks, not thirty 

 feet distant, the eye can discover nothing to awaken amaze- 

 ment : a few steps, however, nearer, the stranger is so over- 

 whelmed with the immensity of the dread abyss, that he re- 

 quires some seconds to collect himself before he gets sufficient 

 courage to make the attempt to examine the awfully grand 

 view that presents itself beneath him — he feels as if he were 

 looking into the brink of eternity ! nor is the situation in 

 which he is compelled to be seated to enjoy the sight less 

 strikingly perilous; he has also to lie down horizontally and 

 look perpendicularly over a projecting rock at the very edge 

 of the immense basin, into a descent that the eye can scarcely 

 fathom from its profundity, and beholds a dreadful chasm 

 hollowed out by the weight of the dashing torrents, which 

 cause to ascend from the white spray that they form below, 

 voh.mps of vapour which, rising into the atmosphere, mingle 

 with the clouds above the highest mountains in the neighbour- 

 hood, and buoyant upwards borne, would rather seem to be 

 the smoke of Etna's fiery bowl, than the subtle extricated 

 particles from the whirlpool of an equally dangerous element. 

 The spectator sees the heavenly bow with all its prismatic 

 colouring and splendour, reflected downwards through the 

 salient aqueous globules athwart the surface of the unfathomed 

 gulf, in the perfectness of the mundane semi-arch. 



" I should imagine the circumference of the crater, which is 

 shaped like a horse-shoe, to be about a quarter of a mile. In 

 front of its open end, a descending forest majestically slopes 

 down from the mountains, making the effect of the whole truly 

 sublime ; and some fields at the top, to the left, give a singular 



