Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1902-02-27

L SWAYED AGAINST The WALL.
CARRYING a little more than 800 feet Of
rawhide rope. The nut that held the
handle on is gone, and the whole ma
chine is in a dilapidated condition, but
rs it is the only means of reaching the
bottom there is no choice but to use it.
"When | was ready to go down, the
Indians placed a sling around my body
under my arms and another around my
thighs, something after the fashion Of
a bo'sun's chair, and | stepped to the
edge. Letting myself e carefully, l
swung out into space and looked down
into the chasm that yawned beneath
me. The creaky old windlasS began to
work, and | felt myself going slowly
down. | sWayed against the wall OF
the crater and escaped injury by kick
ing against the wall with my feet and
pushing with my hands. Down, down,
down-untiI the rope that held me from
eternity looked like a spiders web-l
went, and finally, when it seemed that
the descent would never end, the rope
stopped, and my feet touched the lava
ledge, which directly beneath the wind
lass is about fOUr feet wide.
81 looked down another thousand
feet, made a sort of mental estimate Of
what l still had to go through, then
cast off the sings and signaled for two
of the Indians to join me on the ledge.
They had been there before and soon
joined me, for the trip was not a novel
ty to them. They were armed with
picks and hatchets and soon began cut
ting footholds in the now crust to-
ward the bottom of the crater. They
made about a thousand Of these crude
steps, | following them down rs fast
as the steps were made until just be-
fore sunset we reached tie end Of the
perilous descent.
I'm the middle of the crater's bottom
were two large crags with a little
space between them, and here we de-
termined to camp for the night. We
had told the Indians on the rim to re-
turn to Tlamacas and come back to
pull us out on the morrow. When
darkness closed in around us, we were
alone in the bottom of a volcanoes era
WI u VII AkOlA OH LIN "SA -
cit was 4 weird. creepy experience.
and as the darkness of the night grew
more intense the glowing blowholes
upon every side grew more and more
luminous, and their rhythmic pulsat-
ing 'pfooh, pfOoh, pfoOh,' sounded k
the heavy breathing of some prehistOr-
ic monster, whose breath, creamy
white and very sulphurous, faded away
in dim clouds of mist above the blazing
eye. | looked from one blowhole to an
other in the blackness of that night,
and you may readily understand that
it didn't require an active imagination
to ~cOnjure up all sorts of demons as in
habiting the place. Now and then be-
tween the %pulsating thrObs we would
hear q rumble and q crash as some
bowlder or lava block rolling down
from the rim of the crater found its
last resting place in the conelike bot
tom, where we were. Any II Of the
twenty or more rocks that came down
that night would have ended our ca
reers had it not been for the protection
of the two gigantic crags beneath
which we were camped.
Il slept little that night. The fumes
of sulphur were becoming oppressive.
My lungs we're laboring, owing to the
fumes and the altitude, for we were
more than 10000 feet above the level