The crater was oval, full a mile in its longest diameter, and perhaps 700 to 800 feet in depth; and its almost perpendicular walls of basaltic lava are covered with red and yellow patches of sublimed sulphur.  We climbed a little way down into it to get protection from the wind, but to descend further unassisted was not possible, so we sat there, with our legs dangling down into the abyss.  Part of the malacate, or winder, used by the Indians in descending, was still there; but it was not complete, and even if it had been, so many months had elapsed since it was last used that we should not have cared to try it.  It consisted of a rope of hide, descending into the bottom of the crater in a slanting direction; and the sulphur-collectors were lowered and drawn up it by a windlass, in a basket to which another rope was attached.  A few years back, the volcano used to send up showers of ashes, and even large stones; but now it has sunk to the condition of a mere solfatara, sending out, from two crevices in the floor, great volumes of sulphurous acid and steam, with a loud roaring noise.  The sulphur-working merely consisted in looking for places where the pumice-stone was fully impregnated with sulphur, and breaking out pieces, which were hauled up in the basket.  The chief risk which the labourers ran was from the terrific snow-storms, which come on suddenly and without the slightest notice.  Men at work collecting sulphur have once or twice been caught by such storms in parts of the crater at a distance from the rope, and buried in the snow.

The appearance of the “White Woman,” but little lower than the point where we stood, was very grand, but all other objects looked small.  The two great plains of Mexico and Puebla, with their lakes and towns, were laid out like a map; and the ranges of mountains which hem them in made them look like Roman encampments surrounded by earthworks.  Even now that the lakes have shrunk to a fraction of their former size, we could see the fitness of the name given in old times to the Valley of Mexico, Anahuac, that is, “By the Water-side.”  The peaks of Orizaba and Perote were conspicuous to the east; to the north lay the silver-mountains of Pachuca; and to the south-west a darker shade of green indicated the forests and plantations of the tierra caliente, below Cuernavaca.

It was a novel sensation to be at an altitude where the barometer stands at 15-1/2 inches, so that the pressure on our lungs was hardly more than one-half what we are accustomed to in England; but we did not experience much inconvenience from it.  The last thousand feet or so had been very hard work, and we were obliged to stop every few steps, but on the comparatively level edge of the crater we felt no difficulty in moving about.