"Here we found flocks browsing; they are much exposed to sheep-stealers,
who do not touch travelers, calculating with justice that men do not
carry much money to the summit of Etna." The party passed the Casa degli
Inglesi, which registered a temperature of 31 deg., and then continued the
ascent on foot for the crater. A magnificent view of sunrise was
here obtained.

"Just before we reached the lip of the crater the guide exultingly
pointed out what he declared to be ordinarily the greatest sight of the
mountain, namely, the shadow of the cone of Etna, drawn with the utmost
delicacy by the newly-risen sun, but of gigantic extent; its point at
this moment rested on the mountains of Palermo, probably one hundred
miles off, and the entire figure was visible, the atmosphere over the
mountains having become and continuing perfectly and beautifully
transparent, although in the hundreds of valleys which were beneath us,
from the east to the west of Sicily, and from the mountains of Messina
down to Cape Passaro, there were still abundant vapors waiting for a
higher sun to disperse them; but we enjoyed in its perfection this view
of the earliest and finest work of the greater light of heaven, in the
passage of his beams over this portion of the earth's surface. During
the hour we spent on the summit, the vision of the shadow was speedily
contracting, and taught us how rapid is the real rise of the sun in the
heavens, although its effect is diminished to the eye by a kind of
foreshortening."

The writer next describes in vivid and powerful language the scene
presented to the view at the very mouth of the crater. A large space,
one mile in circumference, which a few days before had been one
fathomless pit, from which issued masses of smoke, was now absolutely
filled up to within a few feet of the brim all round. A great mass of