324 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
Pico peeping above the clouds across the bay, 
and seeming as if directly above our heads, and 
nodding to us ere it drew back again ; and, best 
of all, that wonderful ascent, by two of us, of 
Pico itself, seven thousand feet from the level 
of the sea, our starting-point. We camped half 
way up, and watched the sunset over the lower 
peaks of Fayal ; we kindled fires of faya bushes 
on the lonely mountain-sides, a beacon for the 
world ; we slept in the loft of a little cattle- 
shed, with the calves below us, “the cows’ 
sons,” as our Portuguese attendant courteously 
called them ; we waked next morning above the 
clouds, with one vast floor of white level vapor 
beneath us, such as Thoreau alone has de- 
scribed, with here and there an open glimpse 
of the sea far below, yet lifted up to an appar- 
ent level with the clouds, so as to seem like 
an arctic scene, with patches of open water. 
Then we climbed through endless sheep pas- 
tures and over great slabs of lava, growing 
steeper and steeper ; we entered the crater at 
last, walled with snows of which portions might 
be of untold ages, for it is never, I believe, 
wholly empty; we climbed, in such a gale of 
wind that the guides would not follow us, the 
steeple-like central pinnacle, two hundred feet 
high ; and there we reached, never to be forgot- 
ten, a small central crater at the very summit, 
