62 
VIEW PEOM THE MOUNTAIN. 
and girls, filling tlieir cocoa-nnts, enjoying the luxury 
of a long draught, and washing themselves at the 
same time. We preferred going a few yards further 
off* to slake our thirst in the cool water. A bold peak 
of trachyte, “ Pico massa fina,” rises on the opposite 
side to 600 feet above the lake, and 1337 above the 
sea, as we afterwards ascertained by going up the 
ridge till the peak was brought on with the horizontal 
line, as we did not attempt its steep and dangerous 
ascent. It has three crosses erected on the summit. 
The walk round the lake is highly romantic and 
picturesque. A steep path brought us to the ridge on 
the south-east side, which commands an almost bound- 
less horizon from north-west to south-east, a beautiful 
view over the lake on one hand, and on the other 
we looked down on the vale of St. John and its little 
bay, where the ‘ Wilberforce’ had just arrived to com- 
plete her water. While we looked down on her we 
could not see the men on the decks, and nothing that 
could form a standard by which any person not ac- 
quainted with her dimensions could form an estimate 
of them, so much was our little ship reduced by dis- 
tance and the density of the medium through which 
she was seen slowly, almost imperceptibly, slipping 
over the blue surface of the element on which she 
floated to her anchorage. 
The boundary of sky and water was hardly dis- 
distinguishable ; many clouds far below us appeared 
to be floating on the water. On the other side rose 
