SIR CHARLES LYELL. 259 



crater. "Inside the crater, near the lip, were huge 

 masses of ice, between which and the scoriae and 

 lava of the crater issued hot sulphurous vapors, 

 which I breathed in copiously ; and for six hours 

 after I could not, even after eating and drinking, 

 get the horrid taste out of my mouth, for my lungs 

 had got full of it. The wind was so high, that the 

 guide held my hat while I drew ; but though the 

 head was cold, my feet got so hot in the cinders, 

 that I was often alarmed that my boots would be 

 burnt." 



In 1830, the first volume of " Principles of Geol- 

 ogy, being an Attempt to Explain the Former 

 Changes of the Earth's Surface by Reference to 

 Causes now in Operation," was published. "It 

 will not pretend," he wrote to Murchison, "to give 

 even an abstract of all that is known in geology, 

 but it will endeavor to establish the principles of 

 reasoning in the science ; and all my geology will 

 come in as illustration of my views of those princi- 

 ples, and as evidence strengthening the system 

 necessarily arising out of the admission of such 

 principles, which, as you know, are neither more 

 nor less than that no causes whatever have from 

 the earlist time to which we can look back, to the 

 present, ever acted, but those now acting. ... I 

 must go to Germany. . . . Their language must 

 be learnt ; the places to which their memoirs relate, 

 visited ; and then you may see, as I may, to what 

 extent we may indulge dreams of eminence, at 

 least as original observers." He, too, like all the 



