From our high standpoint, and looking backwards to the sunny side of our cosmorama, we glance over a vast region of the wildest volcanic desolation. Craters from five miles diameter downwards crowd together in countless numbers, so that the surface, as far as the eye can reach, looks veritably frothed over with them. Nearer the base of the rampart on which we stand, extensive mountain chains run to north and to south, casting long shadows towards us; and away to southward run several great chasms a mile wide and of appalling blackness and depth. Nearer still, almost beneath us, crag rises on crag and precipice upon precipice, mingled with craters and yawning pits, towering pinnacles of rock and piles of scoria and volcanic _débris_. But we behold no sign of existing or vestige of past organic life. No heaths or mosses soften the sharp edges and hard surfaces: no tints of cryptogamous or lichenous vegetation give a complexion of life to the hard fire-worn countenance of the scene. The whole landscape, as far as the eye can reach, is a realization of a fearful dream of desolation and lifelessness—not a dream of death, for that implies evidence of preexisting life, but a vision of a world upon which the light of life has never dawned. [Illustration: PLATE XXII. ASPECT OF AN ECLIPSE OF THE SUN BY THE EARTH, AS IT WOULD APPEAR AS SEEN FROM THE MOON.] Looking again, after some hours’ interval, into the great crateral amphitheatre, we see that the rays of the morning sun have crept down the distant side of the rampart, opposite to that on which we stand, and lighted up its vast landslipped terraces into a series of seeming hill-circles with all the rude and rugged features of a terrestrial mountain view, and none of the beauties save those of desolate grandeur. The plateau of the crater is half in shadow 10,000 feet below, with its grand group of cones, now fully in sight, rising from its centre. Although these last are twenty miles away and the base of the opposite rampart fully double that distance, we have no means of judging their remoteness, for in the absence of an atmosphere there can be no aërial perspective, and distant objects appear as brilliant and distinct as those which are close to the observer. Not the brightness only, but the various colours also of the distant objects are preserved in their full intensity; for colour we may fairly assume there must be. Mineral chlorates and sublimates will give vivid tints to certain parts of the landscape surface, and there must be all the more sombre colours which are common to mineral matters that have been subjected to fiery influence. All these tints will shine and glow with their greater or less intrinsic lustres, since they have not been deteriorated by atmospheric agencies, and far and near they will appear clear alike, since there is no aërial medium to veil them or tarnish their pristine brightness.