A bright fire secured us against the piercing dry night-cold; and the _arrieros_ began to sing like _capirotes_ [Footnote: The _Capirote_ or _Tinto Negro_, a grey bird with black head (_Sylvia atricapilla_), is also found in Madeira, and much resembles the Eastern bulbul or Persian nightingale. It must be caged when young, otherwise it refuses to sing, and fed upon potatos and bread with milk, not grain. An enthusiast, following Humboldt (p. 87), describes the 'joyous and melodious notes' of the bird as 'the purest incense that can ascend to heaven.'] (bulbuls), sundry _seguidillas_, and _El Tajaraste_. The music may be heard everywhere between Morocco and Sind. It starts with the highest possible falsetto and gradually falls like a wail, all in the minor _clef_. We rose next morning with nipped feet and hands, which a cup of hot coffee, 'with,' speedily corrected, and were _en route_ at 4.30 A.M. Formerly animals were left at the lower _estancia_; now they are readily taken on to Alta Vista. My wife rode a sure-footed black nag, I a mule which was perfect whilst the foot-long lever acting curb lay loose on its neck. Returning, we were amazed at the places they had passed during the moonless night. Our path skirted the Estancia de los Alemanos, about 300 yards higher than the English, and zig-zagged sharply up the pumice-slope. The talus now narrowed; the side-walls of dark trachytic blocks pinching it in. At this grisly hour they showed the quaintest figures--towers and pinnacles, needles and tree-trunks, veiled nuns and monstrous beasts. Amongst them were huge bombs of obsidian, and masses with translucent, vitreous edges that cut like glass. Most of them contained crystals of felspar and pyroxene. After half an hour we reached the dwarf platform of Alta Vista, 700 feet above the Estancia and 10,730, in round numbers, above sea-level. The little shelf, measuring about 100 to 300 yards, at the head of the fork where the north-eastern and the south-western lava-streams part, is divided by a medial ledge. Here we saw the parent rock of the pumice fragments, an outcrop of yellowish brown stone, like fractured and hardened clay. The four-footed animals were sent back: one rides up but not down such places. Passing in the lower section the shell of a house where the Astronomer's