The ascent is rather steeper than the sides of a pile of gravel would be, supposing it to have been formed by the falling of the material on a given place, without a force sufficient to change its outline. It appeared to me to be at an angle of about fifty or fifty-five degrees with the plane of the horizon. As the cinders yield with the weight of a man, the foot sinking often to the instep, it is a severe task to get up this place. We went at it coolly, but steadily, stopping to take breath after short efforts; and I believe we were about twenty minutes in reaching the summit. The cinders were warm in spots, and a sulphurous smoke issued from the cone in a great many places that we passed. I was too experienced a traveller to run myself out of breath, as the moment of enjoyment approached. Having got within a few feet of the top, I paused to recover breath; poor W----, who had commenced with fury, being still a hundred feet beneath me. The guide waited my leisure; but the guard, whose duty compelled him to go no further than the foot of the cone, but who, being on his first excursion, chose to ascend also, lay panting on the rim of the cone, or crater, as I put my foot by his side. This was another novel and beautiful _coup d’œil_. As the place was very different from what I had expected to see, I shall endeavour to make you understand what it really is. It appeared to me that the depth of the great crater, at the place where we stood, was a little more than half of the descent of the cone itself, on its exterior: though its edge is ragged, and at one spot was two or three hundred feet higher than at that which we had reached. This edge of the cone, or crater, overhung its sides in nearly the whole circuit, and the distance round it was near or quite a mile. It follows, that the diameter of the crater must be about a third of a mile. Its bottom was like a floor of clay, resembling that of the Solfatara, smoke issuing from its crevices. Vivid streaks of brimstone gave it wild, unnatural tints. It seemed quite as level as an ordinary brick-yard, viewed from our stand. A little on one side of this circular plain, rose a small cone, which might be a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high, formed of the same materials as the outer cone, with an orifice perhaps some eighty or a hundred feet in width. This was the living, or true crater. Out of this spot issued all the smoke, fire, stones, and cinders of the ordinary workings of the mountain, of which, in truth, it is the safety valve. This little haystack-looking cone was nearer to the eastern and southern edges of the great crater than to the northern and western, and it is altogether too low to be visible to any except those who ascend to the place we occupied. The red-hot stones must therefore be propelled upwards many hundred feet, perhaps six or eight, to be seen at Naples or Sorrento, where we have often seen them, however, of late.