I begged hard for a torch to be thrown over to me, that I might not be lost when the night came on. It was then that André, one of the ciceroni of Resina, after being promised a bribe, ran over to me, and brought with him a bottle of wine and a torch. We had coasted the lava, ascending for some time, when looking back I perceived my companions endeavouring to cross the lava lower down, where the stream was narrower. In doing this they found themselves insulated, as it were, and surrounded by two different rivers of liquid fire. They immediately pressed forward, being terribly scorched by both currents, and ran to the side where I was; in doing which one of the guides fell into the middle of the red-hot lava, but met with no other injury than having his hands and face burnt, and losing at the same time a bottle of vin de grave, which was broken in the fall, and which proved a very unpleasant loss to us, being ready to faint with excessive thirst, fatigue, and heat. Having once more rallied my forces, I proceeded on, and in about half an hour I gained the chasm through which the lava had opened itself a passage out of the mountain. To describe this sight is utterly beyond all human ability. My companions, who were with me then, shared in the astonishment it produced; and the sensations they felt in concert with me were such as can be obliterated only with our lives. All I had seen of volcanic phenomena before did not lead me to expect such a spectacle as I then beheld. I had seen the vast rivers of lava which descended into the plains below, and carried ruin and devastation with them; but they resembled a vast heap of cinders on the scoriæ of an iron foundry, rolling slowly along, and falling with a rattling noise over one another. Here a vast arched chasm presented itself in the side of the mountain, from which rushed with the velocity of a flood the clear vivid torrent of lava in perfect fusion, and totally unconnected with any other matter that was not in a state of complete solution, unattended by any scoriæ on its surface, or gross materials of an insolvent nature; but flowing with the translucency of honey, in regular channels cut finer than art can imitate, and glowing with all the splendour of the sun.”