Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/63

Oct.] we were able to collect, was not ufficient to prevent us from paing a very unpleaant night.

The day at length began to dawn. We left ome of our guides with their mules at the place where we had pent the night, and proceeded on our journey to the peak, which we were now in hate to accomplih.

We continued, for the pace of an hour, to travel over large heaps of fragments of a greyih coloured lava, amongt which ome blocks of pozzolana were cattered, as alo huge maes of a very compact blackih glas, which bore a great reemblance to the coare glas of bottles. This glas, though formed in the vat crucibles of the mountains at the time of their combution, might become very ueful in the arts; for being already completely manufactured by the hand of nature, it would only require to be expoed to the action of the fire in order to fue it anew, and render it uceptible of being moulded into all the forms that the hand of man is able to give to it.

We arrived at the mouth of a cavern called la queve del ana, the orifice of which is full four feet and a half in diameter. As its cavity runs for a length of more than ix feet in an almot horizontal direction, we were not able to reach the bottom otherwie than by decending into it with the help of a rope. We found that it contained water,