The engineer was not a man who would allow himself to be diverted from his fixed idea.

It might even have been said that he did not observe the country at all, either in its configuration or in its natural productions, his great aim being to climb the mountain before him, and therefore straight towards it he went.

At ten o'clock a halt of a few minutes was made.

On leaving the forest, the mountain system of the country appeared before the explorers.

The mountain was composed of two cones; the first, truncated at a height of about two thousand five hundred feet, was sustained by buttresses, which appeared to branch out like the talons of an immense claw set on the ground.