There are scenes, to which description, and even painting can do no justice, and in conveying any adequate impression of which they must ever fail. Of such, an elegant traveler rightly says, "the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, the combined aspect, may all be correctly given, but the mind of the reader will remain untouched by the emotions of admiration and sublimity which the eye-witness experiences." That which here burst on our sight was emphatically of this kind, and to behold it without singular and deep emotion, would demand a familiarity with the more terrible phenomena of nature which few have the opportunity of acquiring. Standing at an elevation of one thousand five hundred feet, we looked into a black and horrid gulf, not less than eight miles in circumference, so directly beneath us that, in appearance, we might by a single leap have plunged into its lowest depth. The hideous immensity itself, independent of the many frightful images which it embraced, almost caused an involuntary closing of the eyes against it. But when to the sight is added the appalling effect of the various unnatural and fearful noises, the muttering and sighing, the groaning and blowing, the every agonized struggling of the mighty action within—as a whole it is too horrible! And for the first moment I felt like one of my friends, who on reaching the brink, recoiled and covered his face, exclaiming, "call it weakness, or what you please, but I cannot look again." It was sufficient employment for the afternoon simply to sit and gaze on the scene, and though some of[69] our party strolled about, and one or two descended a short distance into the crater, the most of our number deferred all investigation until the next morning.