48 SUMMIT OF THE SUGAK-LOAF. 



debris formed a wall of scorious rock, which stretched 

 into the midst of the loose ashes. They ascended the 

 Sugar-loaf by grasping the half- decomposed scoriae, 

 which often broke in their hands. They employed 

 nearly half an hour to scale a hill, the perpendicular 

 height of which was scarcely five hundred and forty feet. 



When they gained the summit of the Sugar-loaf they 

 were surprised to find scarcely room enough to seat 

 themselves conveniently. They were stopped by a 

 small circular wall of porphyritic lava, with a base of 

 pitchstone^ which concealed from them the view of the 

 crater. The west wind blew with such violence that 

 they could scarcely stand. It was eight in the morning, 

 and they suffered severely from the cold, though the 

 thermometer kept a little above freezing point. 



The wall which surrounded the crater like a parapet^ 

 was so high, that it would have been impossible to reach 

 the crater itself, if, on the eastern side, there had not 

 been a breach, which seemed to have been the effect of a 

 flowing of very old lava. They descended through this 

 breach toward the bottom of the funnel, the figure of 

 which was elliptic. The greatest breadth of the mouth 

 appeared to them to be three hundred feet, the smallest 

 two hundred feet. 



The external edges of the crater were almost perpen- 

 dicular. They descended to the bottom of the crater on 

 a train of broken lava, from the eastern breach of the 



ft ' 



inclosure. The heat was perceptible only in a few 

 crevices, which gave vent to aqueous vapours with a 

 peculiar buzzing noise. Some of these funnels or cre- 

 vices were on the outside of the inclosure, on the external 

 brink of the parapet that surrounded the crater. Hum- 



