QUITO. 309 



were actually, so to speak, standing over it. We proceeded 

 slowly along a small bank of snow, in a north-westerly direc- 

 tion ; Aldas the Indian in front, and I a little behind him 

 somewhat to the left. Not a word was spoken, we fell into the 

 silence common to all mountain-climbers, when, taught by long 

 experience, they become aware that the path they are treading 

 is dangerous. 



4 Great was my excitement when suddenly, as I was looking 

 at a block of stone immediately in front of us, which seemed 

 to hang suspended in a cleft, I saw between it and the extreme 

 edge of the sheet of snow upon which we were walking, a light 

 at a great depth beneath us, like that of a flickering flame. I 

 pulled the Indian violently back by his poncho (the name of 

 a garment, of lama's wool), and forced him to throw himself 

 with me flat down on a shelf of rock, to the left. The ledge 

 was free from snow, and had a horizontal surface, scarcely twelve 

 feet long and between seven and eight feet wide. 



6 We thus lay stretched upon a platform of rock that over- 

 hung the crater like a balcony, and we gazed in fearful proxi- 

 mity into the appalling depths of the terrific gulf. A portion 

 of the perpendicular abyss was filled with eddying wreaths of 

 steam. Assured as to the safety of our position, we commenced 

 investigating our whereabouts. We discovered that the plat- 

 form of rock, upon which we had thrown ourselves, was separated 

 from the snow-covered mass along which we had come by a cleft 

 scarcely two feet in width. The frozen snow, which formed a 

 sort of bridge, did not extend the whole length of the ravine, 

 and on this bridge we had proceeded several steps while walking 

 in the direction of the fissure. The light we had seen through 

 a portion of the cleft, between the snow-ledge and the block of 

 stone wedged in the fissure, was no deception ; we again saw it, 

 on our third ascent, at the same spot, and through the same 

 aperture. It occurred at a part of the crater where the dark 

 abyss was frequently illuminated by small flames, probably of 

 sulphurous gas. . . . The point we here attained was, accord- 

 ing to the barometric measurements I subsequently took, no 

 less than 14,940 feet above the sea.' l 



1 It was not till the close of a sojourn of seven years in the neighbour- 

 hood that La Condarnine and Bouguer, in the year 1742, made the ascent 



