After resting an hour or two, driven to it by our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling painfully in the burning heat up the lava slopes, for we found that the huge base of the mountain was composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in some far past age.
By eleven o'clock we were utterly exhausted, and, generally speaking, in a very bad state indeed.

The lava clinker, over which we must drag ourselves, though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of, such as that on the Island of Ascension, for instance, was yet rough enough to make our feet very sore, and this, together with our other miseries, had pretty well finished us.

A few hundred yards above us were some large lumps of lava, and towards these we steered with the intention of lying down beneath their shade.

We reached them, and to our surprise, so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us, on a little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered with a dense green growth.

Evidently soil formed of decomposed lava had rested there, and in due course had become the receptacle of seeds deposited by birds.