1886. } Ascent of the Volcano of Popocatepetl. 109 
ASCENT OF THE VOLCANO OF POPOCATEPETL. 
BY A. S. PACKARD. 
HIS famous volcano, called Popocatepetl from the Aztec 
popoca, smoking, and ¢epet/, mountain, was the objective point 
of my journey to the Mexican plateau. The Nevada de Toluca 
I had seen a few days previous from the town of Toluca, on the 
Mexican National Railway. This volcano, however, is not a sim- 
ple conical peak, but its snow-covered dome rises 15,156 feet 
above the sea, and out of a mountain mass with four lesser eleva- 
tions about it. From Toluca the crater is seen to be a very large 
one, and we were told that it is 1500 feet deep with a lake at the 
bottom said to be two and a half miles across. 
Orizaba we were yet to see; but nothing could, we thought, 
exceed in interest the distant view of Popocatepetl from the top 
of our hotel in the City of Mexico, as the setting sun gilded its 
snowy dome, and as it went down painted its snow fields 
with roseate hues. It is the grandest mountain summit of the 
valley of Anahuac. It repeats, but with emphasis, the purity of 
form and massiveness of Mt. Shasta, in Northern California. Its 
twin sister, the volcano of Iztacihuatl, or the “ snowy woman,” 
forms a part of the same isolated range—the Cordillera of Ahu- 
_ alco—and was doubtless thrown up at the same time; but it has 
no central dome cleaving the sky, the mountain mass extending 
as a range running nearly north and south, with three broken 
irregular snow-covered summits, of which the central is the high- 
est, reaching’an altitude of 4786 meters or 15,705 feet above the 
sea. The height of Popocatepetl has been variously estimated. 
Humboldt placed it at 5400 meters, or 17,716 feet; Guyot gives 
its altitude as 17,784 feet; Humboldt’s measurement combined 
with those of two later observers, is 17,853 feet, while the French 
savans of the Maximilian expedition put it as high as 18,362 feet. 
The height of the City of Mexico above the sea is 7482 feet, so 
that we had before us an ascent of a little over 10,000 feet. This 
1S nearly 2000 feet less of an ascent than that of Mt. Shasta, which s 
'S 14,442 feet high, while the plain out of which the California 
volcano rises is about 2000 feet above the sea. oo ee 
: For two days previous to starting we were occupied in arrang- 
ing for the ascent. Our party consisted of three. Mr. F A. 7 
Ober, author of the interesting Travels in Mexico, who had pe 
