It Is Possible That Tent Life In The East, Or In The Rocky Mountains, With Beds, Tables, Travelling Knick-Knacks

Of all descriptions, and servants who study their master's whims, may be very charming; but my experience of it having

Been of the make-shift and non-luxurious kind, is not delectable. A wooden saddle, without stuffing, made a very fair pillow; but the ridges of the lava were severe. I could not spare enough blankets to soften them, and one particularly intractable point persisted in making itself felt. I crowded on everything attainable, two pairs of gloves, with Mr. Gilman's socks over them, and a thick plaid muffled up my face. Mr. Green and the natives, buried in blankets, occupied the other part of the tent. The phrase, "sleeping on the brink of a volcano," was literally true, for I fell asleep, and fear I might have been prosaic enough to sleep all night, had it not been for fleas which had come up in the camping blankets. When I woke, it was light enough to see that the three muffled figures were all asleep, instead of spending the night in shiverings and vertigo, as it appears that others have done. Doubtless the bathing of our heads several times with snow and ice-water had been beneficial.

Circumstances were singular. It was a strange thing to sleep on a lava-bed at a height of nearly 14,000 feet, far away from the nearest dwelling, "in a region," as Mr. Jarves says, "rarely visited by man," hearing all the time the roar, clash, and thunder of the mightiest volcano in the world.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 400 of 466
Words from 109999 to 110271 of 127766