The slope becoming steeper, I gradually made my way towards the left
until I came to a great lane, as neatly walled with rock as if it
had been made with human hands. It runs down the mountain face,
nearly vertically in places and at stiff angles always, but it was
easier going up this lane than on the outside rough rock, because
the rocks in it had been smoothed by mountain torrents during
thousands of wet seasons, and the walls protected one from the
biting wind, a wind that went through me, for I had been stewing for
nine months and more in tropic and equatorial swamps.
Up this lane I went to the very top of the mountain wall, and then,
to my surprise, found myself facing a great, hillocky, rock-
encumbered plain, across the other side of which rose the mass of
the peak itself, not as a single cone, but as a wall surmounted by
several, three being evidently the highest among them.
I started along the ridge of my wall, and went to its highest part,
that to the S.W., intending to see what I could of the view towards
the sea, and then to choose a place for camping in for the night.
When I reached the S.W. end, looking westwards I saw the South
Atlantic down below, like a plain of frosted silver.
