colossal wonders of nature, wrapped in the stillness and beauty of night. The whole scene, and the peculiar circumstances under which we viewed it, was one never to be forgotten, while it brought, as all grand and impressive sights will, the most vivid associations before the mind. I pictured to myself the many and extraordinary changes this wild region had gone through to arrive at the condition under which we beheld it. What singular and stupendous results had been brought about by forces and agencies now almost extinct! Time was when the colossal mountain on whose fire-scorched sides we were crouching, was made desolate by tremendous volcanic eruptions, which sent forth clouds of smoke and sulphurous gases, showers of rocks and ashes, and streams and rivers of lava. Then lurid flames lit up the hills for miles around, and darkening clouds of fiery sand swept far and wide over the surrounding country. Then a line of volcanic vents, like beacon-fires, illuminated the rocky headlands of the great mountains around, and every towering fastness rose hot and quaking with subterranean heat. Then a change came about--one of those mysterious convulsions of which we only dream--the volcanic fires ceased, and the yawning craters were filled with snow and the peaks crowned with ice, and, as the earth gradually cooled down, a glorious vegetation, moulded in the most beautiful and varied forms of the creation, spread itself far and wide over the country, and nature smiled in all her radiance upon this magnificent and romantic land. At five o'clock in the morning the thermometer indicated seven degrees of frost, and the wind still blew in fitful gusts, which covered us with sand. The cold now was intense, and, as the moon had set, the wide scope of country around us looked unpleasantly dismal beneath its pall of darkness. Our outlook was towards the east, and as the time for daylight approached we watched anxiously for the first streak of dawn.