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an Italian, though an habitue of the mountain for many
years: whom we will call, for our present purpose, Mr.
Pickle of Portici - suggests that, as it is freezing hard,
and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and
ice, it will surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of
the litters above, tilting up, and down, and jerking from
this side to that, as the bearers continually slip and stum-
ble, diverts our attention: more especially as the whole
length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment,
presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, whith his head
downwards.

The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the
flagging spirits of the Bearers. Stimulating each other with
their usual watchword, «Courage friend! It is to eat Mac-
caroni!» they press on, gallantly, for the summit.

From tinging the top of the snow above us, with a
band of light, and pouring it in a stream through the
valley below, while we have been ascending in the dark,
the moon soon lights the whole white mountain side,
and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the
distance, and every village in the country round. The
whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon
the platform on the mountain-top - the region of Fire -
an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic
cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous
waterfall, burnt up; from every chink and crevice of
which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out: while,
from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, ris-
ing abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets

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