8 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
the uncultivated districts. The distance before us was 
about five leagues, over a road, if such it may be called, 
formed of lumps of lava, scorise, and cinders, in some 
places wedged together in huge masses, and in others 
covered with roughly broken fragments, which the 
islanders had strewed (probably to fill up some 
impracticable chasm) with an utter contempt of the 
principles of Macadamization. 
After crossing two or three chains of mountains, 
now dipping low into the narrow valleys, and again 
breasting the abrupt side of the opposite ridge, we 
reached an open elevated platform, whence we looked 
down upon a wide-spread basin, extending from 
hill to valley, from valley to plain, but girt in on 
all sides by dark volcanic heights, whose gloomy 
aspect appeared to lower in frowns upon the rash 
intruder. The steeps are dotted here and there with 
a few dark and stunted firs, starting at solitary 
intervals from the blackened heather, which is every 
where intersected with broad beds of barren waste, 
overspread with volcanic matter, piled in cumbrous 
heaps upon the scorched soil, and exhibiting the most 
monstrous and fantastic forms, as if but recently cast 
forth by some terrible convulsion. There they stood 
in the same wild and gloomy confusion in which 
they were uplifted from the hidden gulfs below, 
or showered down upon the plain in the fierce storm 
and tumult of eruption. Down the rough and 
blighted sides of the mountains the course of the 
