We dined [at Nicolosi] on omelet, bread, and figs, and the nastiest wine, and at about 7 p.m. started on mules. These beasts had saddles more uncomfortable than words can describe. Their pace was about 2-½ miles per hour, which it was too easy to reduce, but quite impossible to accelerate. Mine had for bridle a cord three feet long, tied to one of several large rings on one side of its head. The journey lasted till 1.30 a.m. or later.... About {36} 1 in the morning, Mr. W. and one guide having long dropped far behind, where their shrieks and yells (now growing hoarse from despair) could be faintly heard in the darkness far down the mountain, we emerged upon the summit between the peaks; and at the same time the full moon, silver, intense, rose from behind the lower summit, and shed a flood of light over the tremendous scene of desolation. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing visible but cinders and sky. At every step we sank eighteen inches into the black dust as we stumbled on in single file in perfect silence. A couple of miles ahead rose the great crater peak, with patches of snow at its foot and the eternal white cloud emanating and writhing from the summit. After an hour's rest at the Casa Inglese, a miserable hovel at the foot of the Cone, we started, wrapped in plaids, the cold being intense. Mr. W. had now rejoined us. The Cone is a hill about the size of Arthur's Seat, covered with rolling friable cinders, from which rise clouds of white sulphureous dust. The ascent took rather more than an hour. Mr. W. gave out half-way up, declaring he should faint. The pungent sulphur-smoke came sweeping down the hill-side, choking and blinding one. Eyes were smarting, lungs loaded, throat burnt, mouth dry and nostrils choked. On we struggled till the very ground gave forth curling clouds of smoke from every cranny. A few more steps and we were on the summit, at the very edge of the crater, which yawned into perdition within a few inches of one's foot. It is an immense glen, surrounded by a chain of heights, with tremendously precipitous sides, bright yellow in the depths, whence rises continually the cloud of smoke. The whole scene is exactly like Doré's illustrations of the Inferno.... The sun rose over Italy as we sat with our heads wrapped up and handkerchiefs in our mouths; but there was no view at all, the height is too stupendous. The {37} horror of the whole place cannot be depicted. We were delighted to get back to the Casa Inglese, where we remounted our mules and crept away. [Sidenote: 1866, Impressions of Eastern travel]