They brought down
with them a beautiful piece of calcined chalk, covered with crystals
of sulphur and arsenic, and some other specimens. Parched and dry as
the ground looked where I was resting, a few grains of barley, dropped
by mules on the occasion of a previous visit, had taken root and had
grown up into ear; and there were also a few roots of a sort of
dog-violet, showing its delicate lavender-coloured flowers 11,000 feet
above the sea, and far beyond the level of any other vegetation.
It was impossible to ride down to the spot where we had left the
baggage animals, and the descent was consequently very fatiguing, and
even painful. At every step our feet sank into a mass of loose scoriae
and ashes; and so we went slipping, sliding, and stumbling along,
sometimes running against a rock, and sometimes nearly pitching
forward on our faces. All this too beneath a blazing sun, with the
thermometer at 78 deg., and not a vestige of shade. At last Tom and I
reached the bottom, where, after partaking of luncheon and draughts of
quinine, we lay down under the shadow of a great rock to recruit our
weary frames.
Refreshed by our meal, we started at six o'clock on our return
journey, and went down a good deal faster than we came up. Before the
end of the pumice-stone or Retama plains had been reached, it was
nearly dark.
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