ASCENT OF POPOCATEPETL. frightful wildness and strange silence of the place. It is a desert above the clouds, piercing the blue ether of heaven, where no trace of living thing exists save the bewildered beings who have invaded its frozen solitude. ains. It was now a few minutes past two o'clock. We had been six and a half hours in making the ascent from Tlamacas. Fatigue and nausea rendered the idea of food loathsome; and for the same reason we could only so far comply with our promise to Colonel Cañedo as to merely taste his brandy to the health of their Majesties. Our course up from the valley of Tlamacas had been at first eastwardly, and thence by a curving line to the southward, so that we gained the crater on the northeast side-Iztaccihuatl bearing north-northwest, and the faintly-penciled forest around Tlamacas being nearly in a line between the two mountVon Gerolt and Baron Gros ascended on the southern slope, having passed through Ozumba, an Indian village to the southward of the volcano. They selected what must have been the most difficult approach, as it involved the scaling of crags not encountered on the The perilous ascent made in opposite side. the winter of 1857 by a commission consisting of four savans, of whom Sonntag, the Swedish traveler, was one, is graphically described by Laveirière, the historian of the expedition. They left Tlamacas at half past six in the morning, and reached the summit at half past one. M. Sonntag was attacked with frothing at the mouth, and all suffered intensely. At that time the water in the great barranca was frozen, and before entering the region of snow they crossed a zone of "glaciers," which had no existence in March of the present year, the snow with us terminating abruptly in the lava and sand. On reaching the crater the scene is the more astonishing from the fact that it opens almost unexpectedly to the view. The vast gulf, with all its ghastly, savage features of misshapen crags and murky vapors, is before you the moIt would be diffiment the edge is attained. cult to exaggerate in describing a spectacle where every thing has been rent, shattered, overthrown, and hurled into "confusion worse confounded" by mighty agencies inconceivable in their power, except by the chaos which every where presents itself-a nightmare of hidThe lip, which is eous, indescribable ruin. lowest on the northeastern side, is a jagged surface some twenty yards in width, sloping rapidly toward the centre, covered with scorious sand, and strewn with masses of feldspar, porphyry, and pumice, and roofed at intervals with sheets of frozen snow, more or less tinted by the drifting sands or the sulphurous Shattered fragclouds issuing from below. ments of melted substances lay piled up in the wildest ruin, stretching away on either hand to the southward and westward, where the rim becomes compact, standing in perpendicular strata of gray and black basaltic and other vol canic rock, and bending into a semicircular like the slow working of Cyclopean enginery, Portions of the inner circumference were cracked across the regular strata into grotesque figures. With the glass we could see, on the Here and there, calcined walls opposite, fissures where the heat had forced open the cliffs. along the sides, for a distance of three or four 695 hundred feet down, were banks of discolored and the Gulf of Mexico, which had been a great snow, which must have fallen recently to have plateau-perhaps as populous as Yucatan is withstood the warmth of the crater. uttermost depths are pools, or reservoirs, be- Whatever tragedy was enacted, and whenever At the known to have been-sunk beneath the ocean. lieved by the Indians to be liquid sulphur-an it happened, Popocatepetl was in for his full appearance which the sunlight gives them at share of rant, and undoubtedly took the part mid-day. Hence may have arisen the idea of of heavy villain. molten gold which the Spanish conquerors imagined the crater to contain. It is not improbable that one of Cortéz's soldiers ascended the mountain and brought away sulphur, of which to make powder, as is stated in one of the great captain's letters to Charles V. struction, such as characterize the approaches Surrounded by the evidences of terrific deto the volcano, the mind is lost in contemplating the fearful agencies which have elevated this vast stack, serving in after-ages as a safetyous clouds proceed from a number of openings, right, or all wrong. Speculations upon cause The sulphur-valve for half a continent. Science may be all of which we counted nine-seven large and and effect bewilder the thoughts, and end in two small-among the irregular piles of lava-leaving the inquirer as much in the dark as blocks and other debris far below. The Indians ever. call these the "respiradores," or breathingholes. They emit columns of hot water and steam, with a gurgling noise already described. Occasionally this monotonous process is varied by the falling of loose rocks into the profound depths; and, as experiments, we rolled down the largest rocks we could move, and listened to their plunging descent. Horizontal jets of sulphurous steam occasionally shot out from the inner walls and at unexpected places. Sulphur collecting has been abandoned by the Indians since one of their number was suffocated in this way while hanging from the "malacate." and draws conclusions which some other punOne learned oracle establishes premises dit, with high forehead and gold spectacles, overthrows in a ponderous tome. and geology clash in hot debate as to whether the six days in Genesis mean days or ages. Theology Divinity and natural laws get by the ears, and libraries teem with dissertations and wranglings over periods of upheaval and subsidence, and mysteries of nature which will probably remain forever a sealed book. We can only recognize an Original Designer, and devoutly believe that out of chaos the Creator evolved order and beauty. These destructive forces may have what the spectacled magnates term their glacial been in action millions of years ago-before period-the era of cold and wreck and waste, of submerged lands and icy seas. But when that. was, what chronologist shall dare to assert ? These are the only noticeable phenomena of the crater; and this ceaseless respiration, and the seething of the caldrons hidden in the recesses of the mountain suffers no change, except when, very rarely, an ominous muttering is heard, or at intervals of years the volcano has in his library ancient manuscripts, written Señor Ramerez, an eminent Mexican scholar, awakens with a drowsy shudder that startles on paper made of the maguey plant, which the adjacent villages into at least transient speak of eruptions of the "Smoking Mountactivity-as it did during the earthquake inain" hundreds of years before the discovery of the fall of 1864, when half the towns on the At-America; and the Abbé Brasseur de Bourlantic slope of the Mexican Andes were jolted to their centres. Then the mountain groaned aloud- -so say the Amecans-and rocks, dislocated from around the crater, rolled down to the sand-belt with the noise of thunder. An erup bourg, the celebrated Yucatan explorer, now in Mexico, at the head of a French scientific commission, has equally interesting records to the same effect. At the time of the Spanish In remote ages all these Mexican cones were now clouds of smoke and ashes are said to conquest a slight eruption occurred; and even in full blast, and Popocatepetl probably bel- sometimes rise above the crater. lowed the loudest of all. He is sedate enough that the monster yet lives and breathes; and It is clear now, but time was when his explosions rever-as no contract has been signed restricting future berated from sea to sea, and his lurid flames eccentricities, the citizens of Mexico are liable illumined all this part of the continent. may have been the epoch of that general con- tion, such as has occurred sometime in the This to find him a dangerous neighbor. vulsion when the aboriginal cities of Yucatan world's history, would not only devastate the and Guatemala were overthrown and their in-country with lava, but the melting of the prohabitants destroyed; when the domes of Orizaba digious accumulations of snow would inundate and Iztaccihuatl were split from summit to base, all the lowlands. and half their craters hurled in fragments over the country; when the subterranean fires, seek-place for sifting geological facts, or the soluBut the crater of a volcano is not the coziest ing vent, burst up through the earth's crust, as in tion of nature's problems. after-ages did Jorullo; and when, as the geolo-day's exertions, we remained only long enough Spent with the gists say has been the case, the Antilles, which to impress the scene on the memory and take once formed across the Mexican Gulf, were a rough sketch, when we clambered again to rent asunder, and the Gulf stream changed its the lip and gazed upon the amazing landscape course, modifying the climate of Europe and opening to the east and north. North America. Then Cuba became an island, proposed to pass the night at the summit and It had been Aw ful Ben Nevis" (the pride of the British Isles, and tiresome boast of cockney tourists), would not reach the peak of Popocatepetl by many hundred feet if piled one on top of another. There probably does not exist in nature a more favorable spot for an extensive view, owing not only to the altitude which a tropical climate enables the adventurer to reach, but to the general absence of that haziness so often obscuring the prospect from extreme elevations, particularly in high latitudes. witness the sunrise, which must be one of the American volcano, would take place about 5000 grandest sights in nature; but with our in-feet below its apex. Four such hills as 66 creasing debility, the expansion of the blood, difficulty of respiration, and some strange symptoms of the heart suffered by two of our number, it was deemed imprudent to remain; besides, we had no means of shelter, and the mercury was even now several degrees below the freezing-point. To the eastward the clouds had entirely disappeared, leaving a crystal atmosphere in the direction of Vera Cruz. From where we stood, shivering with cold and beating our gloved hands to preserve the circulation, the vast cone sloped with fearful distinctness thousands upon thousands of feet, until its base mingled with the irregular anges trending toward the tierra caliente. Away over boundless space lay the painted Mexican landscape, extending into distant States, and imperceptibly subsiding through the temperate regions of the pine and the cereals into horizons of perpetual summer-down to the land of the orange and palm, birds of burning plumage, and the flowering wonders of the tropics. The great central llanos, the lesser Andes with their turreted crests sharply defined, the illimitable forested districts, and the heated jungles of the lower country, were all spread out in one immense panorama, gradually losing itself in the distance-an undulating ocean of verdure glowing like cloth of gold in the sunbeams. Toward the valley of Mexico the prospect was obscured by cumulus clouds, among which we tried to distinguish the lofty volcano of Toluca, but unsuccessfully; but this was more than atoned for by the snowy crags of Iztaccihuatl, two thousand feet below us, and the still more splendid spectacle of Orizaba, a gleaming spire of burnished steel in the eastern sky. Several eminent travelers have reached the crater of Popocatepetl. Besides Sonntag, Von Gerolt, and Baron Gros, already mentioned, Glennie made the ascent in 1827. Humboldt did not accomplish it, but made trigonometrical measurements of its height in the Valley of Tetimba in 1804, estimating it at 17,728 feet. Glennie found it 17,884 feet; but his calculations having been corrected by Burckhardt, whose scientific attainments Humboldt highly praises in Cosmos, the original figures were made to give 18,017 feet. Science, however, has been steadily increasing the altitude of the volcano. Repeated trials, made under the most favorable circumstances, and with instruments superior to those used half a century ago, have added several hundred feet to the summit. Within a few years French savans have taken careful observations from the level country at the base, which yield a height of 18,362 feet above the sea; and two sets of measurements are said to have produced several hundred feet more than even those figures. In the present ascent we were quite unable to use instruments with any accuracy, owing to cold and fatigue. The country around Popocatepetl is rife with stories of wild adventure, murders, hair-breadth escapes, and aboriginal legends running back into the remote ages of American civilization. When the cities of Yucatan were in their glory, a people lived here preceding the Toltecs by centuries, and whose monuments are yet the wonder of modern explorers. With these races, Popocatepetl, as well as Iztaccihuatl, was a great deity who was worshiped with awful solemnities. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg devoted an entire evening to this subject after my return from the volcano, proving that the original civilization of America flourished long prior to that of Egypt, whose arts and sciences came from the West. "Mexico," continued the learned Abbé, "thousands of years ago, was the seat of refinement and culture, until some universal catastrophe of nature convulsed the continent and overwhelmed whole nations." When London and Paris shall have passed away the wanderer among their shattered temples will see no relics of architecture comparable with those now found in the splendid ruins of Yucatan, especially those of Uxmal; and, further-the seeker after new and graceful architectural designs must visit Yucatan to study The view from the crater of Popocatepetl can never be adequately described. Language fails to convey any conception of its extent and sublimity, or its effect upon even an unimpressible nature. No other peak on the globe higher than this has been trodden by the foot of man, although in several instances a greater altitude has been attained on other mountains without gaining the summit. An account exists of two adventurers having climbed to the top of Chimborazo in 1856; but Humboldt, who quotes the story from a California newspaper, is careful not to indorse it. No person can reach the crater of Popocatepetl with any but the most solemn emotions, for he stands above the Western world, from Atlantic to Pacific clear to the Arctic Circle. One feels not the slightest disposition to shout or laugh. If the expedition were conceived in a spirit of frolic, all such ideas will have vanished on gaining the snow region, and at the crater the most garrulous talker will become reflective and taciturn. The elevation is more than 2000 feet greater than the inaccessible peak of Mont Blanc, and the stunning confabulation between Alps and Jura, so grandly described in Childe Harold, if conducted within hearing of the great' the lost art of ancient America. These condi tions existed equally in the uplands of Mex- | with garlands. The Mexican Indian races, co; and the healthy country for many leagues with their strange customs, gigantic monuaround Popocatepetl was densely peopled, as is shown by the altars and idol-caves still existing on the southern and eastern slopes in the primeval forest, and the aboriginal cemeteries in the same vicinity where the remains of the once powerful Chichimaca nation are still thrown out by the shifting sands. Many of their idols, ingeniously carved in stone, I saw in Ameca at the house of the venerable Don Francisco Crespo. He and others had repeatedly carried for sale in Mexico mule loads of copal, in which bodies had been embalmed. Remains of altars, elaborately wrought in volcanic rock, have been found buried among the broken lava-blocks. To this day the worship of the mountain is observed among the aborigines, still boasting their descent from the "tlatoam" or King Acamapitzin. Toward the close of the year they make their sad pilgrimage, Druid-like, into the woods east of the volcano; and in these caves of worship the wanderer may yet hear their lamentations and see the walls piously hung VOL. XXXI.-No. 186.-3 A ments, and mysterious origin, have ever been subjects of curious interest to Maximilian and Carlotta. The amelioration of their condition, and the adaptation of their peculiar industry and ingenuity to the useful arts, has been a matter of no little study with the Emperor, who has repeatedly given audience to political deputations of their representative men. An eminent scholar himself, he invests the Indian races and their history with a scientific importance; while the scarcely less accomplished Empress has become known among even the most distant tribes for the intelligent interest she has taken in the welfare of these ruder portions of her subjects. At the time of the conquest the population of the mountain districts around Popocatepetl had been concentrated into fourteen towns under a king subordinate to Montezuma. Their original religion, customs, and superstitions did not change, but continued through three centuries of Vice-Royalty; and when the sun of Spanish empire went down |