All hideous forms of suffering are shown by Dante, the Italian of gentle genius, 3s he works his way down through the various grades of torments, boyerd the door on which written, "All hope abandon ye who enter here." All about him are most miserable of the dwellers; in hell. Some with their heads barely showing. One, imprisoned forever and beyorla hope in that horrible abode, turns and gnaws at the skull of another.
Dante's characters were alive, but! those which Mr. Iwata beheld were dead, which made them all the more hideous. As he peered down on their bodies, Mr. Iwata could well imagine how they, also, had writhed in pain og had the grisly creatures in Dante's tale. Because of the darkness he could not actually see the mountains fof skeletons which he 1s convinced fare to be found on the ledges Mihara's crater, but it was a simple thing to visualize their existence' that awesome hole.
Unlike the pit of most volcanoes, that of Mihara descends almost perpendieularly, making it impossible for anyone to walk down its edge. It was undoubtedly very largely for this reason that Mihara was chosen a suicide tryst by so many persons. For the same reason, Mr. Iwata, and the men who were assisting him in his remarkable exploration, found it impossible to ret him down safely without the aid of some special device. After consulting. experts they decided that a gondola, attached to one end of a cable on the. outstretched arm of a crane, would be the safest way to get Mr. Iwata down, For this {t was necessary to erect a crane and to carry the gondola and a 10-horse power engine up the slopes of Int Mihara. This "took Several days, but finally the crane was firmly set, the cast-iron gondola made ready and Mr. Iwata placed {nto it
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.