ASCENT 01' T1IE TITOS. 
tlie time when volcanoes have been carefully studied, and the 
love of the marvellous has been less apparent in works 
on geology, well founded doubts have been raised respect- 
ing these direct and constant communications between the 
waters of the sea and the focus of the volcanic fire.* We 
may find a very simple explanation of a phenomenon, that 
has in it nothing very surprising. The peak is covered with 
snow during part of the year; we ourselves found it still so 
in the plain of Kambleta. Messrs. O’Donnel ancl Arm- 
strong discovered in 1806 a very abundant spring in the 
Malpays, a hundred toises above the cavern of ice, which is 
perhaps fed partly by this snow. Everything consequently 
leads us to presume that the peak of Tenerifie, like the vol- 
canoes of the Andes, and those of the island of Manilla, con- 
tains within itself great cavities, which are filled with atmo- 
spherical water, owing merely to filtration. The aqueous 
vapours exhaled by the Narices and crevices of the crater, 
are only those same waters heated by the interior surfaces 
down which they flow. 
We had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the 
Piton, which forms the summit. The slope of this small 
cone, covered with volcanic ashes, and fragments of pumice- 
stone, is so steep, that it would have been almost impossible 
to reach the top, had we not ascended by an old current o: 
lava, the debris of which have resisted the ravages of time. 
These debris form a wall of scorious rock, which stretches 
into the midst of the loose ashes. We ascended the Piton 
by grasping these half-decomposed scoria?, which often broke 
in our hands. AVe employed nearly half an hour to scale 
a hill, the perpendicular height of which is scarcely ninety 
toises. Vesuvius, three times lower than the peak of Tene- 
riffe, is terminated by a cone of ashes almost three times 
higher, hut with a more accessible and easy slope. Of all 
* This question lias been examined with much sagacity by M. Brieslak, 
in bis “ Introduzzione alia Geologia,” t. ii. , p. 302, 323, 347. Cotopaxi 
and Popocatepetl, which I saw ejecting smoke and ashes, in 1804, are 
farther from both the Pacific and the Gulf of the Antilles, than Greno- 
ble is from the Mediterranean, and Orleans from the Atlantic. We must 
not consider the fact as merely accidental, that we have not yet discovered 
an active volcano more than 40 leagues distant from the ocean ; but I 
eousider the hypothesis, that the waters of the sea are absorbed, disti-Ied, 
ancl decomposed by volcanoes, as very doubtful. 
