Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/232

216 as I lay in my bed I had an excellent view of the mountain. My next step was to consult with Salvatori, the most experienced of the guides, from whom I had purchased a good many minerals, as to the possibility of getting a peep down the volcano's throat.

Salvatori undertook to report to me from time to time the state of the mountain, round the base of which I made frequent excursions. After about a fortnight, the explosions were more regular and uniform, and Salvatori assured me that all the usual known indications led him to think that it was a fit time for my expedition. As I wished to see as much as possible, I made arrangements to economize my strength by using horses or mules to carry me wherever they could go. Where they could not carry me, as for instance, up the steep slope of the cone of ashes, I employed men to convey me in a chair.

By these means, I saw in the afternoon and evening of one day a good deal of the upper part of the mountain, then took a few hours' repose in a hut, and reached the summit of the cone long before sunrise.

It was still almost dark: we stood upon the irregular edge of a vast gulf spread out below at the depth of about five hundred feet. The plain at the bottom would have been invisible but for an irregular network of bright-red cracks spread over the whole of its surface. Now and then the silence was broken by a rush upwards of a flight of red-hot scoria from the diminutive crater within the large one. These missiles, however, although projected high above the summit of the cone, never extended themselves much beyond the small cavity from which they issued.

Those who have seen the blood-vessels of their own eye by the aid of artificial light, will have seen on a small scale a