At an altitude of 8900 feet, after a hard struggle, we gained the rounded top of the great peak, and when, under the shelter of a rocky projection, we lay flat down, and peered over the frightful precipice on our left, the whole aspect of the giant mountain, as it swept with its rugged, ice-bound sides down to the wide expanse of bare scoria ravines and black lava ridges, as they wound into the dreary Onetapu Desert below, appeared grand and beautiful, as much by reason of its vast incomprehensible proportions as by the wonderful effects of light and shade produced by the brilliant sunlight as it swept from the bright glacier above into the deep gorges and winding valleys below. Even at this stage we were not yet at the summit of the mountain, for the great rocky crown which we had remarked from the plain below still towered above our heads to a height of 150 feet. We now found that this singular monument was formed by a large outcrop of lava and conglomerate rock, which appeared at some remote period, when the volcanic fires were at their fiercest stage, to have oozed up above the surface of the surrounding rocks, and then congealed into a craggy mass with a symmetrical outline, which assumed the form of a rounded bluff towards the east, and tapered gradually off towards the west. Covered with a thick crown of snow that overhung its summit like a fringe, and glittering from base to top with sheets of ice and shining icicles, it sparkled with an almost dazzling effect beneath the golden rays as they shot from above, forming a grand and befitting crown to the grand mountain. To scale this ice-bound pinnacle was our next task. Even to approach it at some parts was dangerous, for nature, in her certain but mysterious way, was doing her work as we looked on; and as the midday sun reflected its warm rays upon the icy festoons, they melted and fell with a crash at our feet, but where, at its further and shaded end, the wind blew with its cool breath the ice was as firm and as solid as iron.