Diego Ordaz, tried to climb to the summit, and got as far as the snow; whereupon he returned, and got permission to put a burning mountain in his coat of arms, in commemoration of the exploit! If, as he declared, a high wind was blowing, and showers of ashes falling, his turning back was excusable, though his bragging was not. He seems to have afterwards told Bernal Diaz that he got to the top, which we know, by Cortes’ letters to Spain, was not true. A few years later, Francesco Montano went up, and was lowered into the crater to get sulphur. When Humboldt relates the story, in his New Spain, he seems incredulous about this; but since the Essai Politique was written the same thing has been regularly done by the Indians, as the merest matter of business, until the crater has been fairly worked out.
We took our last look at Mexico from the ridge of the crater, and, descending twenty feet at a stride, soon reached the bottom of the cone. As far as we could see, the substance of the hill seemed to be of basaltic lava, which was mostly covered with the lapilli which I have spoken of before as