My guide, who had been snuffing the air and stretching his vision in every direction for the last quarter of an hour, now assured me that a snow-storm was coming, and advised an immediate return down the mountain. I was not disposed to comply, as I had heard that these people are very ready to discourage travellers at the least appearance of any danger, because they are unwilling to encounter the cold of the upper regions. I told him to push on, and never mind the wind, which was now blowing in violent gusts. But in a few minutes, large flakes of snow began to fall, and soon the whole air was obscured. The mules showed some reluctance to proceed, and we had much ado to urge them onward. The guide kept talking of the dangers of our undertaking, and told a story of an Englishman who was lost here about six weeks before in a snow-storm, just like the one that was now raging. It seems he was going up the mountain with two others of his countrymen, and being overtaken by the snow, they strayed from the path, and got into a great plain, full of deep pools of water, covered with a thin crust of ice. In attempting to cross one of these, they broke through, and one of the travellers was drowned, the rest escaping with difficulty after losing all their baggage. This melancholy catastrophe called forth all the sympathies of my companion, who related the circumstances with many mournful ejaculations and shakes of the head, assuring me that he was a _bel giovanotto_, or fine young fellow. As I had never heard a syllable of this story at Catania in all my inquiries respecting the mountain, I guessed at once that the fellow had made it up out of his own head, to scare me from my undertaking. I asked him if he was sure the story was true. He protested that it was true, every word, and there could be no doubt of it, for he had seen the very mule which the drowned man rode, no longer ago than last Friday, trotting through the Corso of Catania. He was a long-backed beast, dark red, mixed with iron gray; and if that was not the dead Englishman’s mule, whose mule was it? I could not help laughing in his face at this odd proof of the story. He was a good deal disconcerted to see me so much amused instead of being frightened, and jogged on without telling any more tales of the misfortunes of travellers.