Macon Beacon

THE MACON BEACON.
P. T. FERRIS, Publisher
MACON, MISSISSIPPI
WOMEN IN A VOLCANO.
Three Americans Make the Fearless Descent Into Popocatepetl.

At midnight they rose from the rude couches in the mountaineer's hut where they had rested and made ready. By dressing warmly, wrapping their feet and limbs in fold upon fold of cloth, since at every step they must break the glazed crust covering the unmelting snows beneath, and by shielding with thick veils their eyes and skin against the glare and sharp needles of the snow, though it was but moonlight. Slowly then the three ladies with their masculine friends began the long walk. To each lady was assigned a guide familiar with the route, and it was his duty, as well as pleasure, to break the way for them by putting his larger foot down and through the crust so that their labor was only to put their feet into his tracks.

Six mortal hours of plodding wearily onward and upward, hardly daring to look behind, at least not often, upon the world, seemingly lying in chaos behind them, but themselves pressing up the snowy heights before them, wrapped in the moist cool glistening of the cloud land. Long, long before the sun broke through the clouds at their feet upon a sleeping, mist-wrapped world below, did they see his glorious flames spring from the far seas and reflected upon the heights toward which they climbed, though faint his glow till a later hour of that very, very early morning. But at last, with their foot wrappings cut to pieces they stood upon the borders of the volcano Mountain Popocatepetl (Glad enough were the worn-out ladies to rest in a poor shelter, while their Indian guides and cook prepared their breakfast).

A faint mist lay rather than rose upon the crater, and the odor of the sulphur was already perceptible. When breakfast being done and all preparations made it became evident that the three Americans actually intended to descend to the sulphur bed in the bottom of the crater, the poor Indians were seized with terror. No woman's foot had ever touched these dens and caves, these mines of sulphur from which their labor had drawn for centuries, from which Cortes obtained the means for the very conquest of their forefathers. These sources of supply would be bewitched, despoiled should a woman's foot ever touch them. They fell upon their knees and begged them to desist from the attempt. But the Americans had braved the toil and danger of the ascent to return unsatisfied. Go down they would. The Indians shook their heads and sighed beneath their breath, and wondered what kind of men those fair gentlemen could be who did not seem to be able to hinder their wives from carrying out this awful resolution. But, since there seemed to be no help for it, they prepared themselves to let down these extraordinary burdens upon the windlasses. Yes: there was nothing else for it but to go down as the gentlemen did upon the cross bars of the rope, which the Indians slowly unwound from above the fair alpinist, for so she might be called, keeping herself from being dashed against the craggy yellow-seamed and stained walls by means of a strong cane or stick, with which she pushed herself away from the crater sides as she descended.

One of the ladies, not so strong as the others, became unconscious from the fumes of sulphur and had to be hurried up to the air again. What was the interior like? An immense nearly circular chamber, of which the floor was an uneven, yellow-tinted surface like a caldron whose contents have hardened while boiling in huge bubbles. Crags and huge spikes or basaltic pillars of sulphurous masses filled the weird shop of the sulphur gnomes. No language can fully describe such an interior. Only those who are willing to pay the price which the Americans paid can have the remarkable sensation of seeing and being inside of a volcano. But once more restored to the upper air, not the least remarkable part of this adventure remained to be tried.

Standing on the border, the descent over the snow slopes, up which they had toiled the night before, looked sharp and dangerous: and too sharp and dangerous it was to attempt by foot as they had come up. The guides must take them down on the patata. Broad-plaited straw mats were these as stiff as an ordinary half-inch board. The guide sat in front with a steering pole, which was also a crook of safety, since, if the descent became too rapid, there was imminent danger of the whole party being pitched head over heels down the steep, perilous slope of ice. Behind the guide sat the ladies, as boys slide down hill, and at a given signal away they flew.

Such a sled trial! Tobogganing is child's play compared to it. The distance up it had taken six hours to climb was passed over again in just fifteen minutes. Then the whole party were once more below the snow limit, and feeling that they had once more returned to the world in which they had previously passed their lives, for their other experiences had seemed to belong to another sphere than that of earth.—Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette.