Ascent of Mt. Etna, February, 1832. 9 



Napoleon charging nature's battlements at the head of armies ; but 

 whether it was owing to our fatigue or to the aerial height at which 

 they were delivered, they did not seem sufficiently misplaced to ex- 

 cite our laughter. On the summit he gave us the whole again, with 

 an improvement of the subject. After a flourish on his own " invin- 

 cible courage" and " consummate skill/ 5 wound off with some most 

 flattering compliments to our fortitude and resolution, he informed us 

 that a gentleman had once rewarded a similar exhibition of these heroic 

 qualities, by the unreserved donation of all his wet clothes. Such an 

 act of generosity on our part would have sent us to Catania a la High- 

 lander. 



A few minutes before two, we began our descent. The philoso- 

 pher's tower was pointed out on the left of the English house ; tradi- 

 dition says that it was built by Empedocles, and thence received its 

 present name. At a quarter past two, P. M. we were at the English 

 house. An immense, rich looking cloud of a whitish color lay, far 

 below us, floating like a canopy over Catania and its plain : it seemed 

 to have gathered while we were busy in our observations on the cra- 

 ter or more distant objects, or rather to have become developed in 

 the atmosphere almost instantaneously. Stopping a few minutes to 

 enjoy this novel and magnificent sight, we refreshed ourselves with a 

 swallow of wine, and descended to the " Casa della neve," in less 

 than an hour over what had cost us six of the most painful exertion 

 in the ascent. 



A motion so rapid and yet so easy, I never achieved on my own 

 legs before, for so great a distance ; we rather bounded than ran down, 

 as the stone of Sisyphus tfiSovSs xvkivSsro* The snow had become so 

 softened by the sun that we sunk at every step, but only enough in 

 most cases to enable us to check and regulate the speed which gravity 

 created. If our feet were plunged too deeply, head and shoulders 

 were equally so, with a jerk which threatened to snap the knee joints, 

 and we stuck like a raspberry vine planted at both ends. A slip was 

 less dangerous as it did not stop our momentum all at once, nor until 

 we had first ploughed a handsome furrow in the snow. Notwith- 

 standing these mishaps, nothing could be more exhilarating than the 

 leaps by which we descended to the common level of mankind. 



We found the Doctor, philosophically consoling himself for the 

 unseen wonders of the crater, over a bright fire in the snow house, 

 which was kept blazing and crackling by the trees of the bosco. Our 



Vol. XXVL— No. 1.2 



