CHAPTER V. 
THE CRATER. 
At eight o’clock, after a good supper at the locanda , we 
set out lor the crater of Mount Etna. It was a mild, clear 
night; the moon was in her prime, and the stars shone out 
like gems of crystallized light, without a single cloud to ob¬ 
scure their glorious radiance. Our horses being no longer 
available, I was reluctantly compelled to leave my favorite 
old charger and take a mule. 
Oh, ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven, what omni¬ 
potent works ye revealed to us that night! What still, shad¬ 
owy forests of gnarled old oaks, and yawning precipices of 
darkness unfathomable, opened to us as we toiled upward ; 
what ghostly mountains, and cities, and temples of blackened 
lava loomed through the shadowy distance ; what boundless 
valleys of mystic light lay outspread beneath us; what a 
solemn stillness reigned over the slumbering earth! Up, 
high over all, with its bare and grizzled cone, towered the 
smouldering crater, lonely and desolate, but mighty in its 
desolation. Where are the castles and palaces that once 
decorated the dim valleys in the depths below ? where are 
the boasted deeds of Roman and Saracen heroes ? where are 
the victors and the vanquished now ? where is all that the 
vaunted ambition of man has accomplished ? Not for human 
ken is it to penetrate the dim vista of centuries, and tell of 
all that lies buried beneath those dark floods ; not for all the 
records of the past to reveal the millionth part of their sad 
mysteries. 
But I think I hear my friend, the Englishman, say, “ Sad 
nonsense all this ; Etna is a stunning place, to be sure; dev¬ 
ilish high, devilish cold, and all that; throws out an amazing 
