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 aérial 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,” 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. Ata 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 era- 
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 xédovde »vAivdero. 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 
Vou. XXVI.—No. 1. 2 
