Chap. VI. 
THE CRATER. 
85 
exception of a few palm-trees, is entirely composed of 
exogens. As far as I have been informed, coniferous trees 
are not found in the interior section of Nicaragua, while in 
Mosquitia, Honduras, and Yucatan pines grow from the 
table-lands down to the sea-shore. A few hundred feet 
below the summit I saw a young pine — the only specimen 
I could discover on the mountain. But an old stump of a 
tree of this class, and of considerable size, stood at the 
brink of the crater. To this stump a rope, which we had 
brought for the purpose, was fastened, and by it I climbed 
down the perpendicular wall which, in a circle, forms the 
upper part of the crater. At the place where I descended 
it may have had an elevation of forty or fifty feet. It is 
the place where the edge of the crater is lowest, and where 
the slope in the interior comes highest up — while, on the 
opposite side, the wall rises many hundred feet in perpendi- 
cular elevation from the centre of the one-sided funnel, a 
vertical cut of the crater representing this figure : — - 
At the *foot of the wall I began to descend the slope 
towards the centre. It is very steep, but not without vege- 
tation, consisting of some tufts of grass, some weeds, and a 
few shrubs. Amongst the latter there was one kind of 
