The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-08-18
On the Upper Rim of Creation

Charles Wellington Furlong in Har- per's Magazine.
 I sat alone on the upper rim of Crea- tion my seat pinnacle of the globe, and looked down on the world The notebook rose-violet, and it's lamb ent flame, winging across millions of miles, lit the cone tip of Teneriffe, transforn- ing it into a beacon of red gold Beneath lay La Rambleta, it's dusky obsidian, like a vast coal heap, it's outer edge clear cut against the far-down Canada which yesterday we crossed. Rivers of volcanic debris swing around the peak seaward like mammoth ser pentine earth creatures, the clouds be- low seeming floating upon the sea like Arctic ice -floes and open leads. I stood on the lip of the Piton cater, 200 feet in diameter; a turn of the head and l looked into and across this yellow, sulphur coated caldron, brushed with turquoise shadow patches, the sun light catching in brilliant cuneiforms of rose on it's serrated edge; beyond
 this stupendous blue wedge projected spanned miles into atmospheric space and crossed Hierro, dim and somber in
 the twilight below. where the sun had
 not yet dispelled darkness The wedge was the vast shadow mountain of Fl
 Teide, still standing between night and day.
 So from the thin wall of porphyritic
 lava of Fl Pico de Teide, 12,152 feet above the sea. I looked down, ever down.
 The violent wind was no gentle re- hinder that I was on the tipmost edge of Teneriffe, which ancient writers con- sidered the highest mountain in the world, and upon whose peak it was impossible to breathe
 The outer sides of the caldera wall a short-stunted cylinder on a truncated cone-are almost perpendicular, so narrow breach on the eastern side was Ia welcome trance. Through this Mouth of Hell'' we descended 80 feet to the smooth floor of this great funnel white; yellow and red-tinged by sul- phur deposits. White silica and yellow sulphur crystals are everywhere-all that remain of the sulphuric acid -af- fected lavas.
 Aqueous, sulphurous vapors buzzing and rumbling, fumed from hole and crevice in white cloud gusts-the lid of Hells caldron indeed where pent-
 up nature restrained her breathing as she exhaled her hot breath from her pulsating breasts of fire Into great cavities within the peak atmospherical water has probably filtered which, through slumbering volcanic heat, is- ouoS run luc OlOW-nOleS as steam. This, laden with muriatic or sulphuric acid vapor and charged with their gases, IS to De more feared than the heat.
 Our bodies were nearly frozen. but our boot-soles, were burned. Within the caldera we found no life not even cryptogamous plants. Humboldt found dead bees in the tunnels mouths in which we also found not only bees, but wasps and spider. These had flown up hu !, xxrinI hai r honey-gathering among the retamas be- low The half wild goats occasionally work into the caldera, where Jose once found one dead
 The caldera is strange fantasy of nature rather than a grim spectacle. Its once seething floor, now hardened lava, scared with strange sinuosities of cal- careous rock. is coated by sulphur de- posits. piatinated by the hand of time into golden solfatara-a vast mortar in which through centuries nature has compounded chemicals for the gods.