Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. The Ascent of Captain Lloyd, Lieutenant Phillpotts, and Lieutenant Taylor, to the tap of the Peter Botte Mountain, The most extraordinary mountain in appearance, is that which bears the name of Peter Botte, from a person, who is said by tradition to have climbed to its summit many years ago, and to have lost his life in coming down again. The attempt has been several times made by our own countrymen since the Island became a British possession, but always till now, in vain. The exploit, however, has been at length accomplished. The account of its successful performance, is given in a letter from one of the parties in the enterprize, which was communicated to the Geographical Society by Mr. Barrow. " From most points of view," says the writer, " the mountain seems to rise out of the range, which runs nearly parallel to that part of the sea coast, which forms the bay of Port Louis ; but on arriving at its base, you find that it is actually separated fromthe rest of the range, by a ravine or cleft of a tremendous depth ; it appears from the account, to be about eighteen hundred feet high. Captain Lloyd, chief civil engineer, accompanied by Mr. Dawkins, had made an attempt in 1831 to ascend the mountain, and had reached what is called the neck, where they planted a ladder, which did not, however, reach half way up the perpendicular face of the rock beyond ;' still Captain Lloyd was convinced, that with proper preparation, the feat might be accomplished. Accordingly, on the morning of the 7th September, 1833, this gentleman, along with Lieutenant Phillpotts, of the 29th regiment, and Lieutenant Taylor, the writer of the letter, set out on the bold and perilous adventure. " All our preparations being made," says the narrative, " we started, and a more picturesque ...