Mr. Bennett 0// //6^ Island of Temnffe. 503 



four 32° ; at the bottom of the cone 36° ; at the top of the Peak one 

 hour and a half after sun-rise 38°. The descent down the cone is 

 difficult from its extreme rapidity, and from the fall of large stones 

 which loosen themselves from the beds of pumice. Having at 

 last scrambled to the bottom, we pursued our march down the other 

 course of the lava, that is to say down its westerly side, having 

 ascended its eastern. The ravines and rents in this stream of lava 

 are deeper and more formidable ; the descent into them was always 

 painful and troublesome, often dangerous, in some places we let our- 

 selves down from rock to rock. I can form no opinion why there 

 should be these strange irregularities in the surface of this lava ; in 

 places it resembles what sailors term the trough of the sea, and I 

 can compare it to nothing but as if the sea in a storm had by some 

 force become on a sudden stationary, the waves retaining their 

 swell. As we again approached La Cueva there is a singular steep 

 valley, the depth of which from its two walls cannot be less than 

 100 to 150 feet, the lava lying in broken ridges one upon the other 

 similar to the masses of granite rock that time and decay have tumbled 

 down from the top of the Alps ; and, except from the scoria or what 

 Milton calls " the Fiery Surge," they in no degree bear the marks 

 of having rolled as a stream of liquid matter. This current like 

 that of the eastward branch has no resemblance to any lavas I have 

 seen elsewhere, it is hardly at all decomposed, full of lamina; of 

 feldspar, the fracture conchoidal, and the texture porphyritic, the 

 colour brown like that of the other branch ; it is but slightly cellular, 

 and contains no extraneous substances. 



We descended the pumice hill with great rapidity almost at a 

 run, and arrived at La Estancia in little more than two hours. We 

 then mounted our mules, and following the track by which we had 



