road was equal to the best I had seen in Europe, the only fault in it being the dangerous curves around the dizzy sides of the mountains. Everywhere there were signs of age and long occupation. The paths leading over the rocky heights had been worn by the feet of men and animals for hundreds

of years.

Following the road we reached a point where it abruptly descends, known as Pedros do Galligo, and a thousand feet below lay the Cintra Michaleuse, the Azorean Vale of Tempe the boast and pride of all the island, the valley of the Furnas. Right across on the opposite side of the crater, we saw the ever-rising smoke of the boiling geysers, whose sulphurous and noxious fumes kill all vegetation in their immediate neighbourhood. Here in 1522 occurred one of the most stupendous volcanic eruptions of modern times. The ashes vomited enveloped the whole island in murky darkness, and covered the land from five to seventeen inches deep with ashes, powdered pumice, and arenaceous trap. The year of the upheaval is, to this day, called "O anno dos Cines," or the ash year.

The eruptions were preceded by earthquakes, when the sea swallowed old islands and gave birth to new ones, some of which remain to this day. Mountains were hurled into valleys, and valleys rose to mountains. A submarine crater burst forth and formed an island ten miles in circumference, which disappeared, in one night, as mysteriously as it came. A thick mantle of ashes, sand and lava from

submarine and subaërial eruptions darkened the heavens. At Villa Franca a mountain fell upon the town, burying for all time five thousand people. In sixty seconds a tidal wave rolled over the huge grave. When the sea receded and the living began a search for the dead amid the ruins, the excavators came upon the skeleton of a mounted horseman, booted and spurred, with lance poised, mired and engulfed as he was fleeing from the doomed city.

Upon the ashes of the buried city a second Villa Franca arose, which has now a population of from four to five thousand souls. A lake three miles in circumference disappeared, leaving at the level of its waters a rich deposit of pozzolana-a bright red, granulated earth. But Furnas was the very focus and theatre of igneous activity on the island.

To-day the awful evidences of its devastating ruin are seen everywhere. Truncated cones rise all around you, whose scarped and deeply furrowed sides, with their immense concavities, tell of the frightful agonies and convulsions of the mother which bore them. The erosion and rain of centuries have deepened the lava furrows of the mountainsides and a luxuriant growth of giant ferns and tropical cryptomeria is bearding them with hoary and venerable age. Eight miles south-west of Furnas the highest mountain then in the island was lifted from its base, flung into a distant valley, and a crater four miles in circumference was created. The lips of this gigantic basin rise eighteen hundred feet

above its bed. Here repose in windless peace Lagoa Grande, whose waters are a bright emerald, and Azul Lake, rivalling its companion in cerulean blue.

The day preceding the eruption was of exceptional calmness, the air was heavy and oppressive, a drowsy stillness brooded over the land. Pasturing cattle herded side by side, sheep bunched closer, and the dog of the shepherd crouched at his master's feet and looked up enquiringly into his face. The stillness continued to deepen, till a sense of loneliness entered into the habitations of man, followed by melancholy and foreboding. No stars were in the cloudless sky that night, the moon swung blood red over the distant hills. At two in the morning the mountain trembled, swayed like a ship on a billowy ocean, when, with a roar heard far out to sea, its crest rose high in the air, and fell into a neighbouring lake, known to this day as Lagoa Secca, or Dry Lake.

Straight up into the heavens, above the loftiest peak of the highest mountain, rose a huge column of fire, and out from the womb of the monster came pillars of smoke and flame. Fearful detonations, produced by escaping gas and bursting lava bombs, followed in rapid succession. Lurid flames and weird lights appeared in the heavens, and a fierce heat scorched all vegetation for miles around. Rocks of blackest lava, many tons in weight, were shot high in the air, and falling crushed into fragments the shepherds' cabins. The darkness beyond the focus of disturbance, the rumbling of noises