74 
SUMMIT or THE PEAS. 
the volcanoes which I have visited, that of Jorullo, in 
Mexico, is the only one that is more difficult to climb than 
the Peak, because the whole mountain is covered with loose 
ashes. 
When the Sugar-loaf (el Piton) is covered with snow, as 
it is in the beginning of winter, the steepness of its declivity 
may be very dangerous to the traveller. M. Le Gros showed 
us the place where captain Baudin was nearly killed when 
he visited the Peak of Teneriffe. That officer had the 
courage to undertake, in company with the naturalists 
Advenier, Manger, and Riedle, an excursion to the top of 
the volcano about the end of December, 1797. Having 
reached half the height of the cone, he fell, and rolled down 
as far as the small plain of Kambleta ; happily a heap of 
lava, covered with snow, hindered him from rolling farther 
with accelerated velocity. I have been told, that in Swit- 
zerland a traveller was 'suffocated by rolling down the de- 
clivity of the Col de Balme, over the compact turf of the 
Alps. 
When we gained the summit of the Piton, we were sur- 
prised to find scarcely room enough to seat ourselves conve- 
niently. We were stopped by a small circular wall of 
porphyritic lava, with a base of pitchstone, which concealed 
from us the view of the crater.* The west wind blew with 
such violence that we could scarcely stand. It was eight in 
the morning, and we suffered severely from the cold, though 
the thermometer kept a little above freezing point. For a 
long time we had been accustomed to a very high tempera- 
ture, and the dry wind increased the feeling of cold, because 
it carried off every moment the small atmosphere of warm 
and humid air, winch was formed around us from the effect 
of cutaneous perspiration. 
The brink of the crater of the peak bears no resemblance 
to those of most of the other volcanoes which I have 
visited: for instance, the craters of Vesuvius, Jorullo, aud 
Pichincha. In these the Piton preserves its conic figure 
to the very summit : the whole of their declivity is inclined 
the same number of degrees, and uniformly covered with a 
layer of pumice-stone very minutely divided; when we reach 
* Called La Cahlera, or the caldron of tte peak, a denomination wtirt 
recals to mind the Oules of the Pyrenees. 
