"Slowly ascending, stopping every few minutes to observe the meteorological instruments, we arrived about halfpast six, on the level of the ice-cavern, 11,050 feet high, and distant from us only about twenty yards. Nothing was to be seen externally, except the chaos of tossed and tumbled blocks of lava, somewhat larger than elsewhere; but not materially different from what was to be seen above, around, below, and on every side. Everywhere a wilderness of black stones closed in our view, except when looking down towards the east. 'Twere ungrateful not to mention that, for had not the sun just risen there, and had we not in truth admired?

"We had done so, and carefully noted the changes that occurred since early morning, from where at first, amid nocturnal darkness, the only symptom of approaching day was the long glade of zodiacal light, shooting upwards amongst the stars to Orion and Taurus; and glowing towards the lower part of its axis, so as to repudiate either the heliocentric ring of one writer, or the geocentric ring of another. Then after a while came the low flat arch of early dawn, faint and blue. With humility it appeared on the scene, and sat down in the lowest place; while the zodiacal light aimed ambitiously at the highest. Time passed on, and the proud one waxed faint, while the lowly one was promoted to a higher and higher position; unto it next was given a reddish hue, as a dress of honour; and the lenticular form of the zodiacal light was seen no more. A few minutes further, and a yellow tint manifested itself in the dawn, upon the red; extending below-it shed a rich orange along the horizon; expanding above-it produced a somewhat cold, greyish, even greenish tint, but one eminently luminous; and fit harbinger of approaching day; lighting up earth, and sea, and the broad white clouds spread far and wide below

us.

"To the south-east, the volcanic peaks of Grand Canary rose in darkcoloured, angular battlements, through the sheet of vapour; but for which, in the E. and E N.E. we might see something of the two lowest and most distant of the Canaries, Lancerote and Forteventura; for their azimuthal direction lies open. Again a new illumination strikes out from the east; its yellow glow is intensified; and has almost overpowered the lower red; while the cold region of light at its upper limit is now corrected by a magnificent blush of rose-pink, which stretches high up into the blue. Then the first point of the solar disc leaps up behind the

horizon of an ocean of cloud, and darts his long vivifying rays athwart its cumulous masses.'

This is prettily written, and shows some imagination in the writer. Might he not have attempted an ode? Who knows but the mind, too, like the atmosphere, might have become rarified at such an altitude, and outdone its sea-level self?

But we wander. Let us return to the upward-faring party.

"By seven o'clock we have reached the height of 11,240 feet, very nearly the middle of this real Malpays. Far and wide it covers, or rather forms, the side of the mountain, with its loose black stones; observing a certain method too; for there is a grooving and ridging, as different lava streams have poured tortuously down, like huge black serpents descending the Peak. One ridge is so like another, that an unskilled mountaineer might easily lose his way; rather, however, in the coming down than the going up; but, at the chief turning points, the guides have piled three or four stones one upon the other; to a stranger not very noticeably; but after having lived for some time in this wild Malpays world, where not a precipice, not a flat, not a patch of smooth or soft ground, not a plant, not a bird, nor even an insect exists, where one's whole attention is taken up with stones, stones, and nothing but stones, all of the same black lava,--the eye becomes at last so nice in appreciating small distinctions amongst stones that the three or four piled by man become as instantly distinguished amongst the acres of them piled by nature, as if they had been an actual finger post let in amidst the barbarous lava."

By-and-by, at an altitude of 11,745 feet, the party emerged from the Malpays" upon Rambleta," a sort of plain, though a very rugged one.

"Instantly there rose before us, high above our heads, the Piton or sugarloaf cone, forming the summit of Teneriffe, resplendent with light red and yellow, like some huge tower, gleaming in the brightness of the morning sun."

Up this cone the party commenced the "last climb," and in a short time began to perceive some warmth in holes and cracks of the rock. These fissures increased continually in number and temperature: then a faint sulphurous smell was perceived.

"A few hasty steps more, and we were on the brim of the culminating

crater, in the midst of jets of steam and sulphurous acid vapours.

Fagh!-on inhaling the first whiff one was inclined to beat an instant retreat for a few steps, looking, for the moment, with infinite disgust on the whole mountain as nothing more than the chimney, 12,200 feet high, of one of nature's chemical manufactories. This chimney, having been built at great expense, she was resolved to turn it to account. We, curiously foolish creatures, had been innocently creeping up the sides, and were now astonished to find, on peering over the mouth of the long stalk, that noisome fumes were ascending from it.

"Again we mounted up on the brim, and soon getting toned down to breathing mephitic exhalations, found the chief feature of the crater interior, some three hundred feet in diameter, and seventy feet deep, to be its extreme whiteness often white as snow where not covered with sulphur. The breadth of rim was hardly sufficient to give standing room for two, so immediately, and in such a knife edge did the slope of outside flank meet that of inside wall. On the portion of circumference where we collected, the ground was hot, moist, dissolving into white clay, and full of apparent ratholes. Out of these holes, however, it was that acidulated vapours were every moment breaking forth; and on the stones where they struck were producing a beautiful growth of needle-shaped crystals of sulphur, crossing and tangling with each other in the most brilliant confusion.

"The north-eastern, northern, and north-western were the highest, whitest, and hottest parts of the crater walls. Towards the west and south they dipped considerably, and verged to an ordinary stone colour inside. Outside they were red and brown all the way round the circle."

"Some short portions of the interior of the wall are precipitous rock ten to twenty feet deep. But, generally, the structure has so crumbled away during long ages of volcanic idleness, that it is now, like a baron's castle of a long past feudal age, going to slow and certain ruin; falling downwards in a mass of rubbish that tends to fill up the central hollow. All about the curving floor my wife and Don Rodriguez wandered over the deep bed of fragments, searching for the finest specimens of sulphur; and with the photographic camera I walked through and through the crater more than a dozen times, in as many different directions, to take the several views completely disproving thereby all alleged dangers of the awful abyss,'

"The expiration of steam by the volcano has rather a happy effect than otherwise; for tempering, as it does, the sharpness of an atmosphere of great elevation, it attracts a population of bees, flies, and spiders, as well as numerous swallows and linnets (Fringilla Teydensis). After the solitude and desolation of the arid and dusky Malpays, our sudden entrance into this bright white caldron of the crater, with insects and birds flying about in numbers through the moistened air, seemed a new, as well as a strange world. A remarkable little colony, at least, an oasis of life and activity in the midst of an elevated desert of lava. During the few minutes that a previous visitor spent on this spot he remarked the bodies of some dead bees, and jumped too hastily to the conclusion of an oblique current of air that brought them up to die.' But the far greater length of time spent by our party on the summit proved plainly that the living bees which swarmed there in such numbers were perfectly at home; and if no food was to be found for them immediately round about, was there not Chajorra at a moderate distance, well clothed on its southern flanks with retamas, whose abundant white flowers are to bees so dear."

But at length it is time to descend. The west wind is blowing strong and cold. It will not do to be overtaken by the darkness on the Malpays.

"Yet wait, my friends, said I, one moment more. Allow me only another photograph; for these sulphurous exhalations of the ground have spoiled nearly all my plates to-day. So Don Martin Rodripoint of the crater wall, absolutely the guez placed himself again on the highest culminating point of the Peak of Teneriffe. His man stood close by; and the yacht carpenter, going past at the moment with a bucket of sulphur specimens, was included in the picture, where the dark rocks in the foreground show the brown exterior, and the white cliff under the Don, the acid and steambleached interior of the terminal crater of Teneriffe."

By the 1st of October, the Titania had come round from her anchorage,

official in league with the cruel rajahs to deal corruptly with every public matter, and to treat the people in the basest manner. It was a serious thing, then, to overturn such a fabric of venality and armed tyranny; and it was not astonishing, that when we did attempt it, we should earn the intense hatred of the individuals and classes forced under by the strong arm of the Feringhee.

The peril of proceeding precipitately in reforming society in Oude had been pointed out to the Earl of Dalhousie by Major-General Sleeman, who had been sent by the noble lord to report upon the state of the province. It was that eminent soldier's opinion that a destruction of the native aristocracy would be followed by a revolt of the native army on the earliest favourable occasion. He advised, therefore, that the annexation should be delayed; but the then Governor-General, in a moment of indiscretion, took the fatal plunge, scarcely observing the precaution of establishing a sufficient garrison in the capital of the new kingdom; and thus, when the tocsin of rebellion was sounded in the western districts, the thousand nobles and officials of Oude, with their countless retainers, constituted a danger from which the authorities might well start back appalled. Accordingly, at an early stage in the history of the mutiny, Lord Canning's attention was fixed upon Lucknow, and the position of extreme difficulty occupied by Sir Henry Law

rence.

In the metropolis of Oude itself great discontent existed, arising from causes akin to those mentioned. Under the lax native rule, hordes of vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and murderous thieves, had either found employment in congenial occupations, or scope for the pursuit of their propensities. The British administration placed those classes under a ban; and, as the number of such bravos was large, and as they were all trained in

the use of arms, their power for mischief became immense; and the city, even before a single symptom of disaffection had been manifested by the Sepoy troops, felt the baleful influence of the abandoned characters with which it abounded. There were more respectable ranks of the inhabitants equally ill-disposed towards our rule. The native merchants, shop-keepers, and bankers, who had supplied the luxurious palace of Najid Ally and his extravagant courtiers with money and goods, not only lost their customers, but were subjected by our regulations to taxes they were before specially exempt from, and hated us cordially in consequence. It would appear, too, that our levies on the population were heavy and improperly apportioned. There were duties on stamps, petitions, food, houses, and eatables. The government took into its own hands contracts for necessaries of public consumption, such as corn and provisions, salt, and the native spirit. The tax on opium was the most unpopular. In Lucknow this article had been quite as much used as it is in Canton, and by raising its price, our functionaries deprived the poorer opium-eaters of what they valued more highly than their daily bread. Many who could not procure it, states Mr. Rees, "actually cut their own throats in desperation." Added to all these causes of hostility to our presence, there was the sinister influence of religious prejudices, excited by fanatical Mahommedan and Hindoo teachers. The zealots of the city were multiplied by the semi-political harangues of the priesthood. Lucknow, as the centre of Mahommedan literature, furnished numerous clever enemies of the infidel foreigners who had wrenched the kingdom from the grasp of its sacred possessors. An industrious crusade had been pronounced against us for some time before the disturbances broke out, and the Commissioner was obliged to maintain authority by a sharp exer

cise of police surveillance, and even the extreme measure of public executions, before the events occurred which fired the temper of the Oude nobles, induced the priests to become declared rebels, and tempted the native army to forsake its allegiance. And thus, when the torch of insurrection was displayed in Oude, all classes of the population were prepared to rush round it. The facts above stated will also show how it came that. while in other parts of India the revolt was confined to the army, in the last annexed province, where it still rages most vehemently, the unmilitary inhabitants have joined in the conflict and lent it intensity.

Severe as were the difficulties, serious the responsibilities, and protracted the privations attending the Siege of Delhi, it must be regarded as second in historical importance to the heroic Defence of Lucknow. While the former has scarcely brought more than one name into prominence; the latter has immortalized Lawrence, Havelock, Outram, Inglis, and many others in minor positions, whose exploits have displayed the highest order of valour- that of patient endurance of evils, hope against hope, and judicious courage exhibited in the very crisis of despair. The EightySeven Days' resistance of the great Sepoy army of Oude by the starved, cholera-struck, and hourly-diminishing garrison in the Residency, forms the grandest episode in the Indian struggle; and exhibits all those virtues of the British character-in the soldier, the civilian, the tender mother, and the faithful wife-which the world has had to admire during other emergencies in our history, but never more unaffectedly and cordially than on the occasion in question. It is not surprising that several of the survivors of the miseries and glory of the drama should deem it a duty to publish accounts of the Siege's daily progress, kept in the form of diaries, showing the alternations of confidence and fear, the moments of depression and rejoicing, the startling incidents, the hair-breadth escapes, creditable humanities, and general coolness, intrepidity, and magnanimity, charac

teristic of the hourly life of the beleaguered remnant, who contrived to keep up their spirits with such success, and to fight with such amazing determination, when their trusted leaders had fallen, when hunger gave carnage hundredfold horror, and the Residency, from one end to the other, was a scene of appalling ruin-in parts covered with unburied corpses; pervaded by an intolerable stench; and almost in every struggle, being sadly thinned in numbers, as the Sepoy marksmen, of whom several were singularly true in aim, from under cover of buildings in the city picked down every officer they recognised among the defenders. To hold out under such circumstances, when no expectation of relief cheered the suffering garrison, was the purest form of courage. No words could be considered extravagant in awarding praise to the "heroes of Lucknow ; and every reader of these sentences will feel gratified that the public are now put in possession of the main features of the Defence, from persons who took part in the operations, either as volunteers from the civil service, or in a regular military capacity.

Hitherto we have depended upon the Despatch of Colonel Inglis, and occasional letters in the newspapers, for our knowledge of the origin and different phases of the Mutiny in Oude; and although the former was graphic and full, and the latter have been, in most instances, well written, there was still desired that detailed, formal, and complete account of the Siege of Lucknow supplied by Mr. Rees, and "A Staff Officer."

Their descriptions substantially agree. While Mr. Rees, however, seizes upon incident and anecdote, illustrative of Life in the Residency, during the Defence, blending these with the military narrative proper, "A Staff Officer" confines himself strictly to the strategetical and other measures of Sir Henry Lawrence, and his successors in command. The latter author is careless of style. His work is simply a diary of occurrences. Neither book, indeed, aims at literary excellence. All that is contem

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