described in the volcano of Stromboli. From the margin of the crater, the waves of fluid lava, set in motion by vapours, were seen rising and falling in the incandescent chasm. The Spanish historian, Gonzalez Fernando de Oviedo, first ascended the Masaya in July 1529, and made comparisons with Vesuvius, which he had previously visited (1501), in the suite of the Queen of Naples as her refe de guardaropa. The name Masaya, belongs to the Chorotega language of Nicaragua, and signifies burning mountain. The volcano, surrounded by a wide lava-field (mal-pays), which it has probably itself produced, was at that time reckoned amongst the mountain group of the "nine burning Maribios." In its ordinary condition, says Oviedo, the surface of the lava, upon which black scoria float, stands several hundred feet below the margin of the crater; but sometimes the ebullition is suddenly so great, that the lava nearly reaches the upper margin. The perpetual luminous phenomenon, as Oviedo definitely and acutely states, is not caused by an actual flame, but by vapours illuminated from below. It is said to have been of such intensity that on the road from the volcano towards Granada, at a distance of more than three leagues, the illumination of the district was almost equal to that of the full moon.

Eight years after Oviedo, the volcano was ascended by the Dominican monk, Fray Blas del Castillo, who enter

53 In the French translation of Ternaux-Compans (the Spanish original has never been published), we find at pp. 123 and 132:-"It cannot, however, be said precisely that a flame issues from the crater, but a smoke as hot as fire; it is not seen from far during the day, but is well seen at night. The volcano gives as much light as the moon a few days before it is at the full." This old observation upon the problematical mode of illumination of a crater, and the strata of air lying above it, is not without importance, on account of the doubt, so often raised in recent times, as to the disengagement of hydrogen gas from the craters of volcanoes. Although in the ordinary condition here indicated the Hell of Masaya did not throw out scoriæ or ashes (Gomara adds, cosa que hazen otros volcanes), it has nevertheless sometimes had true eruptions of lava; the last of which probably occurred in the year 1670. Since that date the volcano has been quite extinct, after a perpetual luminosity had been observed for 140 years. Stephens, who ascended it in 1840, found no perceptible trace of ignition. Upon the Chorotega language, the signification of the word Masaya, and the Maribios, see Buschmann's ingenious ethnographical researches, Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen, s. 130, 140, and 171.

tained the absurd opinion that the fluid lava in the crater was liquid gold, and associated himself with an equally avaricious Flemish Franciscan, Fray Juan de Gandavo. The pair availing themselves of the credulity of the Spanish settlers, established a joint-stock company to obtain the metal at the common cost. They themselves, Oviedo adds satirically, declared that as ecclesiastics they were free from any pecuniary contributions. The report upon the execution of this bold undertaking, which was sent to the Bishop of Castilla del Oro, Thomas de Verlenga, by Fray Blas del Castillo (the same person who is denominated Fray Blas de Inesta in the writings of Gomara, Benzoni, and Herrera), was only made known (in 1840) by the discovery of Oviedo's work upon Nicaragua. Fray Blas, who had previously served on board ship as a sailor, proposed to imitate the method of hanging upon ropes over the sea, by which the natives of the Canary Islands collect the colouring matter of the Orchil (Lichen Roccella), on precipitous rocks. For months together all sorts of preparations were made, in order to let down a beam of more than 30 feet in length, by means of a windlass and crane, so that it might project over the deep abyss. The Dominican, his head covered with an iron helmet and a crucifix in his hand, was let down with three other members of the association; they remained for a whole night in this part of the solid crater bottom, from which they made vain attempts to dip out the supposed liquid gold with earthen vessels, placed in an iron pot. Not to frighten the shareholders they agreed that,

54 "The three companions agreed to say that they had found great riches; and Fray Blas, whom I had known as an ambitious man, gives, in his relation, the oath which he and his associates took upon the Gospel, to persist for ever in their opinion that the volcano contained gold and silver in a state of fusion!" Oviedo, Descr. de Nicaragua, cap. x, pp. 186 and 196). The Cronista de las Indias is, however, very indignant (cap. 5) that Fray Blas narrated that “Oviedo had begged the Hell of Masaya from the Emperor as his armorial bearings." Such a geognostic memento would certainly not have been in opposition to the heraldic customs of the period, for the courageous Diego de Ordaz, who boasted of having reached the crater of the Popocatepetl when Cortez first penetrated into the valley of Mexico, bore this volcano as an heraldic distinction, as did Oviedo the constellation of the Southern Cross, and earliest of all Columbus (Exam. crit. t. iv, pp. 235-240), a fragment of a map of the Antilles.

when they were drawn up again they should say that they had found great riches, and that the Infierno of Masaya, deserved in future to be called el Paraiso del Masaya. The operation was afterwards repeated several times, until the Governor of the neighbouring city of Granada, conceived some suspicion of the deceit, or perhaps of a fraud upon the revenue, and forbad any "further descents on ropes into the crater." This took place in the summer of 1538; but in 1551 Juan Alvarez, the Dean of the Chapter of Leon, again received from Madrid the naïve permission "to open the volcano, and procure the gold that it contained." Such was the popular credulity of the sixteenth century! But even in Naples in the year 1822, Monticelli and Covelli were obliged to prove by chemical analysis, that the ashes thrown out from Vesuvius onthe 28th October contained no gold!

55

The volcano of Izalco, situated on the west coast of Central America, 32 miles northwards from San Salvador, and eastward from the harbour of Sonsonate, broke out 11 years after the volcano of Jorullo, deep in the interior of Mexico. Both eruptions took place in a cultivated plain, and after the prevalence of earthquakes and subterranean noises (bramidos) for several months. A conical hill rose in the Llano de Izalco, and with it simultaneously an eruption of lava poured from its summit on the 23rd February, 1770. It still remains undecided, how much is to be attributed, in the rapidly increasing height, to the upheaval of the soil, and how much to the accumulation of erupted scoriæ, ashes and tufa-masses; only this much is certain, that since the first eruption, the new volcano, instead of soon becoming extinguished like Jorullo, has remained uninterruptedly active, and often serves as a beacon light for mariners near the landing place in the Bay of Acajutla. Four fiery eruptions are counted in an hour, and the great regularity of the phenomenon has astonished its few accurate observers." 56 The violence of the eruptions was variable, but not the time of their occurrence. The elevation which the volcano of Izalco has now attained since the last eruption of 1825, is calculated at about 1600 feet, nearly the same as the elevation of Jorullo above the 55 Humboldt, Views of Nature, p. 368.

56 Squier, Nicaragua, its People and Monuments, vol. ii, p. 104. (John Bailey, Central America, 1850, p. 75).

original cultivated plain; but almost four times that of the crater of elevation (Monte Nuovo) in the Phlegræan Fields, to which Scacchi 57 ascribes a height of 432 feet from accurate measurement. The permanent activity of the volcano of Izalco, which was long considered as a safety-valve for the neighbourhood of San Salvador, did not however preserve the town from complete destruction on Easter eve in this year (1854).

One of the Cape Verd Islands, which rises between S. Jago and Brava, early received from the Portuguese the name of Ilha do Fogo, because, like Stromboli, it produced fire uninterruptedly from 1680 to 1713. After a long repose, the volcano of this island resumed its activity in the summer of the year 1798, soon after the last lateral eruption of the Peak of Teneriffe in the crater of Chahorra, which is erroneously denominated the volcano of Chahorra as if it were a distinct mountain.

The most active of the South American volcanoes, and indeed of all those which I have here specially indicated, is the Sangay, which is also called the Volcan de Macas, because the remains of this ancient city, so populous in the early period of the Conquista, are situated upon the Rio Upano, only 28 geog. miles to the south of it. The colossal mountain, 17,128 feet in height, has risen on the eastern declivity of the eastern Cordillera, between two systems of tributaries of the Amazons, those of the Pastaza and the Upano. The grand and unequalled fiery phenomenon which it now exhibits, appears only to have commenced in the year 1728. During the astronomical measurements of degrees by Bouguer and La Condamine (1738 to 1740), the Sangay served as a perpetual fire signal. In the year 1802, I myself heard its thunder for months together, especially in the early morning, in Chillo, the pleasant country seat of the Marquis de Selvalegre near Quito, as half a century previously, Don Jorge Juan had perceived the ronquidos del

57 Memorie geologiche sulla Campania, 1849, p. 61. I found the height of the volcano of Jorullo to be 1682 feet above the plain in which it rose, and 4266 feet above the sea-level.

58 La Condamine, Journal du Voyage à l'Equateur, p. 163; and in the Mesure de Trois Degrés de la Méridienne de l'Hémisphère Austral.

Sangay, somewhat further towards the north-east, near Pintac, at the foot of the Antisana.59 In the years 1842 and 1843, when the eruptions were associated with most noise, the latter was heard most distinctly not only in the harbour of Guayaquil, but also further to the south along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, as far as Payta and San

59 In the country house of the Marquis of Selvalegre, the father of my unfortunate companion and friend, Don Carlos Montufar, one was often inclined to ascribe the bramidos, which resembled the discharge of a distant battery of heavy artillery, and which with the same wind, the same clearness of the atmosphere and the same temperature, were so extremely unequal in their intensity, not to the Sangay, but to the Guacamayo, a mountain forty miles nearer, at the foot of which a road leads from Quito, over the Hacienda de Antisana to the plains of Archidona and the Rio Napo. (See my special map of the province Quixos, No. 23 of my Atlas géogr. et phys. de l'Amérique, 1814-1834). Don Jorge Juan, who heard the Sangay thundering when closer to it than I have been, says decidedly that the bramidos, which he calls ronquidos del Volcan (Relacion del Viage á la America Meridional, pt. i, t. 2, p. 569), and perceived in Pintac, a few miles from the Hacienda de Chillo, belong to the Sangay or Volcan de Macas, whose voice, if I may make use of the expression, is very characteristic. This voice appeared to the Spanish astronomer to be peculiarly harsh, for which reason he calls it a snore (un ronquido) rather than a roar (bramido). The very disagreeable noise of the volcano Pichincha, which I have frequently heard at night in the city of Quito, without its being followed by any earthquake, has something of a clear rattling sound as though chains were rattled, and masses of glass were falling upon each other. On the Sangay, Wisse describes the noise to be, sometimes like rolling thunder, sometimes distinct and sharp, as if one were in the vicinity of platoon firing. Payta and San Buenaventura (in the Choco) where the bramidos of the Sangay, that is to say, its roaring, were heard, are distant from the summit of the volcano in a south-western direction, 252 and 348 geog. miles. (See Carte de la Prov. Du Choco, and Carte hypsométrique des Cordillères, Nos. 23 and 3 of my Atlas Géogr. et Physique). Thus, in this mighty spectacle of nature, reckoning in the Tungurahua and the Cotopaxi, which is nearer to Quito, and the roar of which I heard in February, 1803, in the Pacific Ocean (Kleinere Schriften, Bd. i, s. 384), the voices of four volcanoes are perceived at adjacent points. The ancients also mention "the difference of the noise," emitted at different times on the Eolian Islands by the same fiery chasm (Strabo, lib. vi. p. 276). During the great eruption (23rd January, 1835) of the volcano of Conseguina, which is situated on the coast of the Pacific, at the entrance of the Bay of Fonseca, in Central America, the subterranean propagation of the sound was so great, that it was most distinctly_perceived on the plateau of Bogotá, at a distance equal to that from Etna to Hamburgh (Acosta, Viajes Cientificos de M. Boussingault á los Andes, 1849, s. 56).