On we went through the dried low ground until we arrived, after walking a mile or so, at the foot of the mountain where the ground is again elevated, and contains some trees (also dome-palms). I let the others ascend as if they were running for a wager, and looked right and left for antiquities, picking up stones with which the steep path I had struck into was bestudded, whilst the long grass and low bushes, but still more the projecting rocks, made the ascent difficult and laborious. Some ledges of rocks encircle the gable-end like a crown; no human being could have chiselled here, nor has nature so disposed them in her natural course; I knew the cause from what I had already seen, and from the specimen I had put into my fowling-bag; I was standing upon volcanic ground, and therefore I might expect to see a crater on the top. Reddish ashes and pieces of lava of similar colour filled the space between the rocks, the porosity of which, as well as the particles of shining black little stones, similar to coals and porphyry, convinced me that they have also undergone a powerful volcanic fire, which has dried up all the pores; or the entire mountain might have risen from a subterraneous forge, and poured over itself a thick coating of lava like liquor from a foaming goblet. If we go upon the supposition, that it is an independent volcano, and not merely an elevated volcanic mass, we may easily recognize in the top an extinct crater, levelled by the fallen walls of rock, such as we see even now on the eastern side, by lava and volcanic mud, wherein ants at present wallow, and by the crumbling fragments of projecting rocks. The summit of this burnt-out volcano forms an oval terrace from N.W. to S.E.; the north-eastern part, however, is shelving, but the reservoir of lava could not be transplanted here, for some of the breaks of the mountain in that part, are precipitously disrupt, and there are no signs of a lava stream below. The porous rocks on the summit, exhibit a kind of decay, entirely earthy and friable, so that we might believe that they were once covered with boiling mud. The curved rocks, jutting out to the south, are smooth, considerably lower than our summit, and separated from it by a horizontal rocky wall, cleft here and there, which surrounds the crater at the top, and is not higher on the side we are than five to ten feet. The flat part of the upper ring falls away slightly to the west, and no lava stream was to be seen here. If the great lake so often spoken of by me existed at one time, its waters never perhaps dashed over the summit of this Stromboli, which is about four hundred feet high, much as it might increase by the opened sluices of the high land, and thus be in a condition to reach the volcanic mountain itself. An immeasurable circular plain lay now at our feet, in which the Nile extended from W. to N.; at its side, turned towards us, were several standing mountain streams,