"To give you an idea of the crater of Pichincha," said the Doctor, as they stood on its edge and watched the clouds of smoke and steam curling upwards, "let me give you some figures. This crater is 2500 feet deep; that of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, is 600; Orizaba is 500; Etna is 300; and Hecla 100. Professor Orton says Vesuvius is a portable furnace by comparison with this crater, which is a mile wide and half a mile deep. We are standing nearly 16,000 feet above the level of the sea, 5000 feet higher than Etna, almost four times the height of Vesuvius, and five times that of Stromboli, the 'lighthouse of the Mediterranean.'" "I cannot do better," said Fred, afterwards, in describing the view from the summit of Pichincha, "than quote the words of Professor Orton in 'The Andes and the Amazon.' Here they are: "'Below us are the smouldering fires, which may any moment spring forth into a conflagration; around us are the black, ragged cliffs--fit boundary for this gateway to the infernal regions. They look as if they had just been dragged up from the central furnace of the earth. Life seems to have fled in terror from the vicinity; even lichens, the children of the bare rocks, refuse to clothe the scathed and beetling crags. For some moments, made mute by the dreadful sight, we stood like statues on the rim of the mighty caldron, with our eyes riveted on the abyss below, lost in contemplating that which cannot be described. [Illustration: EL ALTAR, VOLCANO, ECUADOR.] "'The panorama from this lofty summit is more pleasing, but equally sublime. Towards the rising sun is the long range of the Eastern Cordilleras, hiding from our view the great valley of the Amazon. To right and left are the peaks of another procession of august mountains, from Cotocachi to Chimborazo. We are surrounded by the great patriarchs of the Andes, and their speaker, Cotopaxi, ever and anon sends his muttering voice over the land. The view westward is like looking down from a balloon. Those parallel ridges of the mountain chain, dropping one behind the other, are the gigantic staircase by which the ice-crowned Chimborazo steps down to the sea. A white sea of clouds covers the peaceful Pacific, and the lower parts of the coast. But the vapory ocean, curling into the ravines, beautifully represents little coves and bays, leaving islands and promontories like a true ocean on a broken shore. We seem raised above the earth, which lies like an opened map below us; we can look down on the upper surface of the clouds, and, were it night, down too upon the lightnings.'"