and nose bleeding (nay, bleeding at eyes and
ears) which are said to be inseparable from life
at ten thousand feet above the sea. None of
this party felt anything of the kind. Mr. Smyth
attributes them all to want of training, and
says the same would happen in London to most
people who lifted themselves up ten thousand
feet at a stretch, on the treadmill, in seven
hours.

Here are they then, packing-cases and all,
ten paces from the edge of a precipice of fifteen
hundred feet, forming the inner wall of the great
crater. After tea they sleep comfortably, and,
next day, a breastwork of stones is raised round
the tents— the lady's tent being of the kind
commended in Galton's Art of Travel, with
canvas floor to keep out dust and hinder the
wind from getting in underneath. Then begins
the unpacking: barometers of all kinds;
thermometers, wet and dry bulb; the smaller (or
Sheepshanks) equatorial, four mules' loads in
itself; photographic apparatus; magnetometers,
&c.; all with framework lamentably shrunk and
cracked, owing to the intense atmospheric
dryness, which, acting just like its opposite, damp
(as heat acts like intense cold), had entirely
destroyed the adhesive power of the glue. Thus,
when Mr. Smyth carefully lifts a box by its two
handles, he raises only its lid and sides; several
glass vessels are imprisoned by the shrinking of
their wooden cases, a few broken by the
unwonted pressure; and so forth. When next
we send an astronomer up to this height, we
must, like careful tailors, "allow for shrinking"
in the instruments with which we
furnish him. Of course the effects of such an
atmosphere are far from pleasant— lips crack,
hair frizzles, nails become brittle and split to
the quick, faces turn scarlet; our astronomer
preserves an ominous silence as to how Mrs.
Smyth likes these phenomena.

However, even this was not high enough to
satisfy the demands of science. Though far
above the clouds, which lay in a compact ocean
about half way down, broken (as we have said)
by gaps over the several islands, and though a
magnifying power of one hundred and fifty gives
results never seen in this climate, still our
observer is occasionally much troubled with
"dust haze," which visited them in great banks
whenever there was any commotion in the air
currents below. Fancy what our air must be
down here, when even at nine thousand feet the
atmosphere gets full of finely divided particles
of solid matter. The haze never rises above
ten thousand feet; so Mr. Smyth's mind is soon
made up to observe what he can here;
above all, to note the extraordinary difference
between the temperature in the sun and in the
shade, and in the readings from the wet and
dry bulb thermometers; and then to go up the
real Peak above the line of haze. So down
they all go, after experiencing several instances
of fine old Spanish hospitality from rich and
poor; one Don brings them a sumptuous breakfast
of partridges, and honey-cake, and cheese,
and goat's milk; so much, indeed, of this rich
nourishing drink, that the two sailors make
themselves quite ill, and then, in a penitent fit,
vow they'll never touch the stuff again while
they are on the island.

Very hard it is to persuade their native
friends, and above all the mule drivers, that the
huge Pattinson equatorial can ever be carried
up the mountain; it has to be taken to pieces,
the contents of its three clumsy cases being
distributed into thirteen; in this work a German
watchmaker, Herr Kreitz— where is there not
a German watchmaker?— is of immense service.
He can even lend a few screws for fastening the
cases, nails there are plenty of, but good screws
have scarcely got beyond the limits of Teutonic
civilisation. At last, with no greater mishap
than the roll over of two or three baggage-
horses, the great telescope is got up to "Alta
Vista," and observations begin in good earnest,
and continue (only broken by a trip to the summit
of the Peak) until the 19th of September. So
hearty is the work, "term days" i.e. days of
incessant observation, being frequently kept on
dates previously arranged (for the sake of
comparing notes) with the captain of the yacht,
that we lose sight of Mrs. Smyth altogether,
until recalled to the fact that there is a lady in
the party by some such phrase as "my wife
exclaimed, 'Oh! there is smoke coming out of
the ground,'"  or reminded by the account of
some savoury meal that the "culinary department"
is well looked after. Mrs. Smyth is an
excellent manager. Some of the goat's milk gets
so shaken on a journey that it is pronounced
undrinkable, sour and thick. She examines it
before letting it be thrown away, and finds it
churned into excellent butter, a thing scarcely
ever seen in Teneriffe before; and which, by
means of a lump of snow brought down for her
by one of the native lads, she manages to keep
sound and hard for a long time. Wonderful
fellows these native lads; when Mr. Smyth is
gathering specimens, he picks up one after
another, obsidians, trachytes, &c., in lumps as
big as a man's head. All of which the Canarian
boy, already loaded with a box of chemicals and
a photographic tent, insists on carrying; whereupon
Mr. Smyth is very angry with Humboldt
for calling the native guides listless and
disobliging. Possibly the difference may have been
in the two employers, rather than in those who
served them.

Our author's book is abundantly illustrated
with photographs. We may be quite sure his
wife cleaned the plates, and otherwise helped
lim in the more delicate manipulations. He
tells us that she sketched a great deal; the
colours of sky and rock he speaks of as
something marvellous. Did she sing? Some have
said the voice is thin and ghost-like at these great
elevations. Of course she would help in keeping
his meteorological accounts. Finally, her
presence aloft doubtless touched the chord of
Spanish chivalry in the natives, and won for
the party far more consideration than they would
else have had. As to the more common-place
matter of "buttons," the sailors would have