Our athaleb now descended and alighted; we clambered to the ground, and I, taking the grapple, fixed it securely between two sharp rocks.

We were at last on Magones, the Island of Fire.
The brightness of the aurora light had left us, but it needed not this to show us the dismal nature of the land to which we had come.
It was a land of horror, where there was nothing but the abomination of desolation--a land overstrewn with blasted fragments of fractured lava-blocks, intermixed with sand, from which there arose black precipices and giant mountains that poured forth rivers of fire and showers of ashes and sheets of flame.

A tremendous peak arose before us, with a crest of fire and sides streaked with red torrents of molten lava; between us and it there spread away a vast expanse of impassable rocks--a scene of ruin and savage wildness which cannot be described, and all around was the same drear and appalling prospect.
Here in the night-season--the season of darkness and of awful gloom--we stood in this land of woe; and not one single sign appeared of life save the life that we had brought with us.

As for food, it was vain to think of it.

To search after it would be useless.