NOT A GOOD CLIMBER.
"When we reached the edge of the snow we sat down and rested. Some of the peons had fallen behind, and we prided ourselves that we had shown the Mexicans that Americans know how to climb high mountains without turning back for want of breath.
"We ate some of the solid food and drank some of the cold tea we had bottled expressly for the occasion before leaving Tlamacas. When we had thoroughly rested and refreshed ourselves we put on our spiked shoes, covered them with the woollen stockings, and, armed with alpenstocks and aided each by a volcanero, we attacked the great icy cone of the giant Popocatepetl. The volcaneros carried our overcoats and had them ready to wrap around us whenever we stopped.
"Fortunately for us, the snow was in the best condition for ascending; it was like a very hard drift, softened by the sun just enough to give a good foothold but not sufficiently to let our feet sink more than an inch or so below the surface. Our principal guide went ahead and we followed in his tracks; every few minutes we paused to rest and breathe, and long before we reached the crater the lightness of the air was such that our halts were longer than our periods of ascent.
"The blood rose to our faces, our veins throbbed, and for a time our heads seemed on the verge of bursting. We appreciated the advice of a gentleman in the capital, that no one with the least tendency to heart trouble, or one with weak lungs or a tendency to corpulence, should undertake the ascent of the volcano; and if we were to add anything to the advice, it would be that everybody else should refrain from making the attempt; it is the hardest venture we ever made in mountain climbing, and we certainly would not again undertake it or urge a friend to do so.
"We left to one side the Pico del Fraile, a pinnacle of porphyry that shoots up into the air like the spire of a church. There was a deep chasm like an enormous moat at the side of the Pico, and we asked our guide if anybody had ever passed the chasm and climbed to the dizzy top. His face wore a smile of incredulity as he pronounced the feat impossible, and furthermore said there was nothing there to pay for the effort. Colonel Watson asked him, in sheer bravado, if he would undertake to escort us there, but he shook his head without making any audible reply. It is quite possible that he suspected the colonel of 'chaffing.'
"Suddenly we were enveloped in a cloud so dense that we could see only a few yards in any direction. The guide ordered us to keep close together; and if by any accident we should become separated, we were to call out immediately, and also keep our faces and feet directed to the ascent of the mountain. We obeyed his instructions, but it was our good-fortune that the cloud did not long remain to trouble us. It disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and we had a fine view of the Valley of Puebla and of the great mountain, the White Woman. As we rose to and above its level it lost all resemblance to the recumbent figure that gives its name, and became nothing but a broken mass of rocks and snow-drifts."