Again, when Mr. Bingham was there, it was full, and concentric waves were flowing out and around from its centre. Having carefully observed its movements a while, he threw a stick of wood upon the thin crust of a moving wave where he thought it would bear him, even if it should bend a little, and then stood upon it a few moments. In that position, thrusting his cane down through the cooling tough crust, about half an inch thick, and immediately withdrawing it, forthwith there gushed up, like ooze in a marsh or melted tar under a plank, enough of the viscid lava to form a globular mass, which afterward, as it cooled, he broke off and bore away. It is not easy for one that has not himself been in a similar position, to sympathize with and pardon the traveler at such a point, for he is unwilling to forbear and leave it till fairly surfeited and seared with heat and admiration, or driven off by some sudden spout and roar, or splash of the caldron. You gaze, and gaze, and gaze in amazement, without conscious thought, like a man in a trance, reluctant to go away, and you want to spend at least a day and night, viewing close at hand its ever-varying phenomena. Had we only brought with us wrappers, I believe we should have been the first to have slept on the Black Ledge. Now that the edge of curiosity is a little blunted and the judgment cool, we can see that there would be a degree of hazard and temerity in it which is not felt under the excitement of novelty, and in the full tide of discovery. Forced by startling admonitions, of instant danger, I had to quit suddenly the precarious footing I had gained on the caldron's edge, like a hungry man hurried from his repast ere he has snatched a mouthful. But the look I caught there, and the impression of horror, awfulness, and sublimity thence obtained, live and will live in my conscious being forever and ever; and it is this shall help me utter what many have experienced, and have wished to say before the poet said it for them: "One compact hour of crowded life Is worth an age without a name." A moment of being under such circumstances is an epoch in the history of one's mind; and he, perhaps, may be deemed the most highly favored of mortals who has the most of such epochs in remembrance, provided only that the incommunicable thoughts and emotions which, in the moment of that experience, seemed to permeate the very substance of the mind, have given it a moral tone and impulse running through all its subsequent life. It is thus that thoughts are waked "to perish never," being instamped ineffaceably upon the spiritual frame-work and foundation stones of the soul, dignifying and consecrating them to noble uses.