(by A. P. M.).—I had made two ascents of Agua previous to the expedition just described by my wife. The first was in January 1881, when I walked from Santa Maria to the crater and back in the day (for the mule-path had not yet been made), arriving at the summit at about 10 o’clock; on the way up I had passed through a belt of cloud which thickened and spread until the whole country seemed to be covered up with it. The sun was shining in a brilliantly blue sky overhead, and the top of the mountain stood out perfectly clear, like an island in a silver sea. It was an exquisitely beautiful sight looking down on the great mass of sunlit billows stretching to the horizon, but it was not what I had come to see, so after waiting for four hours I packed up my camera and compass and marched down again.
On New Year’s day, 1882, I climbed up Agua again, and as it was fortunately a clear day I took a round of angles and some photographs.
During the next few days I made the acquaintance of Dr. Otto Stoll, who was then practicing medicine in Antigua, and collecting the valuable notes on the Indian languages which he has since published, and, to my great delight, I learnt that he wished to make the ascent of Fuego; so we arranged to start the very next day for the village of Alotenango. On the 7th January we left that village about 7 o’clock in the morning with seven Mozos, carrying food, clothing, and my camp-bed, and rode for an hour towards the mountains, when we dismounted and sent back our mules. The first two hours’ climb was not so very steep, but it was tiring work walking over the loose mould and dry leaves under the thick forest. At 10 A.M. we stopped an hour for breakfast. Dr. Stoll was in very bad training, as he had been suffering from fever, and it needed all his pluck to face the hill at all. Then we recommenced our climb under shadow of the forest by a steep path cut through the undergrowth. At the height of about 9500 feet we, for the first time since starting, got a sight of the peak rising on the other side of a deep ravine. The whole of the slope on which we looked was bare of vegetation, and presented to the eye nothing but desolate slopes of ashes and scoriæ broken higher up with patches of burnt rock; we scrambled on through the thick undergrowth, often with loose earth under foot, and by degrees the vegetation changed and we got amongst the pine-trees. At about 11,200 feet we came to a spot where the earth had been levelled for a few yards by the Indians, and there we determined to pass the night. I put up my bed, and the Mozos arranged a fence of pine-boughs to break the force of the wind, and collected wood for a fire. As we were all snug by about half-past four, I scrambled up a little higher to see what sort of view I could get of the Meseta and cone for a photograph, and then returned and watched the reflection of the sunset over the more distant peaks and against the perfect cone of Agua. It was a most beautiful sight, but the cold which followed the sunset soon took all our attention, and when I had turned into bed I had on three jerseys, two flannel shirts, and a loose knitted waistcoat under my cloth clothes, and my rug double all over; yet I felt the cold intensely, and poor Stoll, who was even better wrapped up than I was, was shivering, so we pulled down the waterproof sheet which we had rigged overhead and put it over both of us; still I was frequently awakened by the cold, and Stoll got, I fear, no sleep at all. The Mozos rolled up in their ponchos, with their toes to the fire, seemed to endure the cold much better than we did. We turned out of our shelter at about half-past four in the morning, and felt all the better after drinking hot coffee; we then sat for an hour watching a most beautiful dawn and sunrise. At the opposite side of the valley rose the Volcano of Agua, sloping on one side to the plain of Antigua, and on the other in a long unbroken sweep to the sea, more than forty miles away. Peak after peak stood out against the red light into the far distance, and on the right the low coast-line and the sea showed up very clearly.
As soon as the sun was up we started for the summit. I stopped on the way to get a photograph of the cone, which lay to the left of us as we ascended; but the clouds came over just as I was ready, and I had to give it up. A little over 12,000 feet we left the scraggy pine-trees and arrived at the northern end of a cinder ridge, called the Meseta, which is at the summit of the slope we had been climbing. To the north of us, on the other side of a deep rift, rose the distant cone of Acatenango, the highest of the three peaks of the mountain, covered with sparsely scattered pine-trees almost to the top; to the south, half a mile distant at the other end of the Meseta, rose the active cone of Fuego.
THE FIRE PEAK AND MESETA.
West from the Meseta was a most lovely view over a wooded valley, broken by cultivation, and dotted with villages to the slopes of Atitlan, the nearest to us of the long line of volcanoes which follows the coast-line and sweep in long wooded stretches to the sea. On the land side the slope of Atitlan dipped into the great lake which sparkled below us in the sunlight. Beyond the lake ridge after ridge rose abruptly in the distance. The wind came bitterly cold over us as we stopped to look at the view, and every now and again the clouds shut everything from our sight; the Mozos huddled together under tufts of coarse grass, and, as we had been warned, refused to go any further. So we set out along the cinder ridge of the Meseta alone; it was just broad enough to walk along in safety, but a fall on the east side would have sent one headlong down a precipice, or on the west side sliding down steep cinder slopes, broken by smoking holes like half-formed craters, into the black forest-covered gullies below.
PEAK OF ACATENANGO, FROM THE MESETA.
In a very high wind it would be impassable; as it was I only lost first one and then the other of my (double) Terai felt hats, whirled off my head by the sudden gusts. At the end of this ridge we came to the actual cone, more than 400 feet high, formed of small loose cinders and scoriæ, as steep as the roof of a house. It was a terribly hard pull up. With the help of a strong stick, and often by using my hands and with many rests on the way, I at last reached some lava rocks where there was good foothold. Stoll was so weak from his fever that two or three times he told me that he must give up, but when he saw me getting on in front of him he plucked up courage and came on again. I had thought the ridge of rocks was round the crater itself, but after scrambling up them I found that there was still 40 or 50 feet above me of steep cinder slope, which luckily proved to be harder and gave better foothold than what we had already passed. Up this I climbed, and at the very top of the peak looked over into the crater on the sea-side. It was a hole about a hundred feet deep, almost surrounded by broken jagged and smoking rocks covered with sulphurous deposit and falling away on the further side to greater depths which projecting walls of rock hid from my view. I went back down to the ridge of rocks I had passed and shouted encouragement to Stoll, who was pluckily struggling on. Fortunately for me I suffered from none of the headache and heart-beating which had troubled me on the top of Agua the week before. Perhaps the most curious thing about the mountain is the fact that it rises quite regularly and gradually to a sharp point, on which the two of us could sit and get an uninterrupted view all round.
Once at the top Stoll was more venturesome than I, and induced me to follow him round the smoking edge of the crater to a projecting rock, a few yards to the left, but we did not greatly improve our view. The fumes from the crater were not very pleasant, but luckily the wind was in our favour. After a short rest on the summit we returned to the Meseta, shooting down the cinder slope as if it were snow, somewhat to the damage of our boots.
We got back to our camping-place about 11 o’clock, and after a good breakfast, started for the descent, and reached Alotenango between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon.
CHAPTER VI. THE ROAD TO GODINES.
We left Antigua on the morning of the 12th January. Just as we were ready to ride out of the Patio our landlord approached me, carrying in his hand a hideous toy parrot, sitting in a swing, with staring red eyes and scanty green feathers glued on its back. This he solemnly presented
