Page:A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War.djvu/64

40 accumulation of fine black ash or sand, in which the foot sinks at every step. Masses of scoria and vitreous lava, or obsidian, have been thrown up by the volcano, and lie scattered on every side.

On reaching the summit, you find yourself on the brink of a crater half a mile in diameter, within which lie five secondary craters. These act as so many chimneys for the great furnace, which roars and bellows below, and which day and night, with deafening roar, unweariedly throws up its fiery blast at intervals of five, seven, or ten minutes, according as its action is more or less vehement. Some travellers have visited it repeatedly at intervals of several years, and their accounts of the intervals of eruption never vary beyond this slight difference. Huge masses of black rock or liquid fire are tossed in the air, to a height of 200 or 300 feet, often falling back within the crater, or else hurled to the valley below. Clouds of white steam mingle with denser clouds of the finest dark-grey dust, which is carried by the wind to all parts of the island, coating every green leaf with a powder like fine steel-filings, which fills the eyes and nostrils of all breathing creatures in a most unpleasant manner. When rain falls, it absorbs this dust, and becomes literally a mud-shower.

From the position of the inner craters, it is obvious that even the most foolhardy scientific traveller could hardly venture to approach them to peer into the mysterious workings of that mighty caldron. Yet a native legend records, that in one of the fierce battles between the tribes of Tanna, one party was gradually driven backward, till they retreated to the summit of the cone, and even there they still fought on, contesting foot by foot of the sandy ridges of the inner crater, where a multitude of these savage warriors perished, having fought to the death, unheeding the wrath of the fire-gods.

But of the isles visited by the Seignelay, before I had the privilege of joining the party, there is none which I regret so much as Easter Island, or, as the inhabitants call it, Rapa Nui, where they touched on the way from Valparaiso, from which it is distant about 2500 miles, without any intermediate isle. I think it must be the loneliest spot in the Pacific, as there are apparently only two