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Low, yellow sand-hills ring it in, shutting it from the vast blue crags of the Andes, which rise up, splintered and snowy, to the east. The air there is of an intense clearness, and those who live there can see the Tacna churches, forty miles away. It is no longer the port it was, but it does a fair trade in salt and sulphur, and supplies the nitrate towns with fruit.
Presently comes a blue blaze and a splitting crack, as if a comet had come shouldering into the map of South Africa, and knocked its head in. We pushed on, smelling sulphur, burnt flesh, and hair. 'By gum! said I; 'something's got it'; and I was to rights. The Cape cart stood on the veld, without a scratch on the paintwork. The four mules lay in their traces, deader than pork.
The floor itself is nothing but a crust of sulphur full of rents and holes, whence vapours constantly arise. This crust covers a surface of boiling hot bitter water, and by breaking it beautiful crystals of sulphur may be obtained. The eastern is called by the natives the king's-crater; its walls are only between five and six hundred feet in depth, and are perfectly bare from top to bottom.
He then stated that he would be obliged to return to the Green Sulphur Springs that day, and that, as it was a long ride, he would like to start as soon as his horse could be brought to him.
"His right arm was become useless to him," says Mainwaring, "and how greatly his senses were disordered at intervals, for a long time, appeared from an hundred instances, which are better forgotten than recorded." With some difficulty his medical advisers persuaded him to go to the sulphur bath of Aix-la-Chapelle, where, according to Mainwaring, he submitted to prolonged and drastic treatment.
The distant lake, just seen amid the screen of leaves through the gorge of the valley, gleamed like a sea of molten sulphur; the deep narrow defile, shut in by the steep and wooded hills, looked deeper, more wild and gloomy, when revealed by that vivid glare of light.
An English gentleman told us he had bought oranges in the season for one cent per dozen. There is one item of export of rather peculiar character sulphur which is obtained from the volcano. We saw it drawn through the streets in large blocks. Only two hundred years ago an eruption of Mount Etna took place, and 27,000 people were buried by the lava.
When the King saw this he cried: 'Alas! now we are ruined indeed, for that was no other than the Fairy Carabosse, who has had a grudge against me ever since I was a boy and put sulphur into her porridge one day for fun. Then the Queen began to cry. 'If I had only known who it was, she said, 'I would have done my best to make friends with her; now I suppose all is lost.
Somewhat of this smell had already reached us and we complaining thereof, the lady had said, "It is because I was but now in act to bleach my veils with sulphur and after set the pan, over which I had spread them to catch the fumes, under the stair, so that it yet smoketh thereof."
Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots of his hair. Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture of nux vomica and bay rum. Dry Valley found the recipe in a Sunday newspaper.
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