TRAVELS IN MEXICO.
or wear spiked sandals; but I knew it must be pretty soft snow that my feet would slump through, and so I merely strapped on my old hunting-shoes, which had assisted me in the climbing of many lesser volcanoes in the West Indies, and buckled on my canvas leggings; this was the only preparation I made for climbing. My peon furnished me with a spiked staff,—not one of those gaudy alpenstocks, such as Cook excursionists use
in scaling the mighty Alps, and then bring home and stick up in a corner to be worshipped ever after,—but one little bigger than a broomstick, with a rigid iron spike in it.
Leaving the rancho, we immediately entered the pines, and, riding through them for half a mile, struck diagonally down the side of a wide and deep barranca, and then climbed the other side in the same way; here begins the vast stretch of volcanic
