Cratee of Pichincha. 139 



our guide ran away. "We went on without liim, but when 

 halfway down were stopped by a precipice. 



On the 22d of October, 1867, we returned to Piehincha 

 with another guide, and entered the crater by a different 

 route. Manuel, our Indian, led us to the south side, and 

 over the brink we went. We were not long in realizing 

 the danger of the undertaking. Here the snow concealed 

 an ugly fissure or covered a treacherous rock (for nearly 

 all the rocks are crumbhng) ; there we must cross a mass 

 of loose sand moving like a glacier down the almost verti- 

 cal side of the crater ; and on every hand rocks were giv- 

 ing way, and, gathering momentum at each revolution, 

 went thundering down, leaping over precipices, and jostling 

 other rocks, which joined in the race, till they all struck 

 the bottom with a deep rumbhng sound, shivered like so 

 many bombshells into a thousand pieces, and telling us 

 what would be our fate if we made a single misstep. We 

 followed our Indian in single file, keeping close together, 

 that the stones set free by those in the rear might not dash 

 those below from their feet; feeling our way with the 

 greatest caution, clinging with our hands to snow, sand, 

 rock, tufts of grass, or any thing that would hold for a 

 moment ; now leaping over a chasm, now letting ourselves 

 down from rock to rock ; at times paralyzed with fear, and 

 always with death staring us in the face ; thus we scram- 

 bled for two hours and a half, till we reached the bottom 

 of the crater. 



Here we found a deeply-furrowed plain, strewn with 

 ragged rocks, and containing a few patches of vegetation, 

 with half a dozen species of flowers. In the centre is an 

 irregular heap of stones, two hundred and sixty feet high 

 by eight hundred in diameter. This is the cone of erup- 

 tion — its sides and summit covered with an imposing group 

 of vents, seventy in number, all lined mth sulphur and 



