86 THE CRATEE. Book I. 
the dimensions of a common whortle-berry shrub, with 
clusters of white bell-shaped flowers. I descended on a 
ground formed by a loose agglomeration of tuffaceous or 
clayey parts, lapilli, scoria?, and fragments of rocks, with 
efflorescences of various salts, and loose crystals of sul- 
phur scattered about over the surface, in such a manner 
as to admit of no other opinion but that they must have 
fallen down from an ascending column of hot steam and 
gases, by which they were either carried up already 
formed, or in which they were formed during its passage 
from the interior of the mountain into the atmosphere. 
Several of these crystals were even lying on the grass. 
Amongst the rocks scattered about, or half imbedded in 
the tuff, I saw some large fragments of white crystalline 
marble, and others of an augitic rock of great hardness 
and tenacity. The remaining fragments were of the same 
nature as the loose masses of scoriae covering the outer 
sides of the summit. The vertical wall, on the opposite 
side of the crater, shows strata of different colour, indicat- 
ing the various nature of the matter ejected during suc- 
cessive eruptions of the mountain : for I have little doubt 
that the cone has been formed by the accumulated material 
fallen down after having been ejected into the air from the 
crater. 
I regret that these few remarks comprise all the informa- 
tion I am able to give in reference to the crater of the volcano 
of Telica. The state of my health continued to be very 
weak. I descended the slope towards the centre of the 
funnel for a few hundred steps, when suddenly my feet broke 
through the hard crust of the clayey soil and enffered into a 
hot mud from which sulphurous vapours rose. I had just 
time and strength left to fall back on the ground, and to 
crawl up a few steps, where I remained for some minutes 
