302 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 
about seven hours in the ascent, were quite ready for something to eat. 
Our sumpter mule was the last to arrive, as his rider had stopped on 
the road to buy some goat’s milk, and the sun was setting as he 
arrived. The Casa Inglese consists of two rooms—one for visitors, and 
the other for the muleteers; and there is outside of it a small stable for © 
the mules. The latter was so covered with snow that the mules were 
stabled in the muleteers’ room; and the mule drivers, four in number, 
honoured us with their presence in our apartment. We soon had a 
good charcoal fire, and then a cup of tea and some eggs. My two com- 
panions were very abstemious, and, I confess, were obliged to take away 
from me both the tea, and the eggs, and the bread, and the butter, or the 
chances would have been against the stock holding out for breakfast. 
The tea was wonderfully good. Melted snow makes excellent tea; 
and one ought really to go as far as the Casa Inglese to know what a 
delightful beverage tea is in sucha place. Our meal over, and our 
charcoal fire out, we got our beds ready. On one side of the wall are 
two rows of broad shelves; on the top shelf the fresh straw was laid 
for us; on the lower the muleteers slept. The night was clear and 
bitterly cold (the Casa is 9592 feet above the sea). We were to 
be up at two o’clock, in order to ascend the cone by sunrise; so we 
all tried our very best to go to sleep; but one thing after another 
prevented us. 
The mules had had their bells left on, and as they were subject to night- 
mare, these bells rang out at intervals in a most energetic way, the 
sound sounding so loud amid the almost painful silence that was 
around, that the bells had to be taken off, and then in the outer 
room there was quietness; but in our own room the muleteers com- 
menced to breathe most loudly, the shelves with their thin covering of 
straw commenced to feel wondrous hard;no matter which side I lay 
on, I found my ears, which had never troubled me in my life before, 
disagreeably in the way of resting; I lay on my back, but there was a 
narrow slit in the roof above me, and the stars were looking in, and 
then passing away every moment. That excellent delicious tea had 
done for me, and there was no sleep to be had that night. I roused 
all up, the moment I could say that it was two o’clock, and in 
half an hour we were on our way up the cone. In my opinion this is 
the only difficult part of the ascent; up to the Casa Inglese, it is so 
gradual, that itis hard to believe that, when there, one is 9600 feet 
high; but the last 1260 feet of the mountain (a cone of loose volcanic 
ash) is most disagreeble and distressing to ascend; one often sinks to 
their knees in the ashes, or slides back for yards; on this morning, too, 
there poured down the cone clouds of hot sulphureous vapour, which 
were positively choking and blinding. Following the example of our 
guide, we tied our handkerchiefs around our mouths and noses, and so 
clambered on. On getting to the summit, each ofus was of a nasty 
ashy hue, that frightened one the other, until we found that we were 
all the same. On the top we got to the windward of the crater’s 
mouth, and beheld, first, the dawn out over the sea—then the sun— 
