proximated of them, as if they had broken out upon one and the same fissure only 64 miles in length, are the eight volcanoes, situated between the Laguna de Managua and the Bay of Fonseca, between the volcano of Momotombo and that of Conseguina, the subterranean noise of which was heard in Jamaica and on the highlands of Bogotá in the year 1835 like the fire of artillery. In Central America and the whole southern part of the new continent, and generally from the Chonos Archipelago in Chili to the most northern volcanoes of Mount Edgecombe on the small island near Sitka,63 and Mount Elias on Prince William's Sound, for a length of 6400 geog. miles, the volcanic fissures have everywhere broken out in the western part, or that nearest to the Pacific Ocean. Where the line of the Central American volcanoes enters with the volcano of Conchagua into the state of San Salvador, in the latitude of 13° (to the north of the Bay of Fonseca) the direction of the volcanoes changes at once with that of the west coast. The series of the former then strikes E.S.E.-W.N.W.; indeed, where the burning mountains are again so closely approximated that five, still more or less active, are counted in the short distance of 120 miles, the direction is nearly E.-W. This deviation corresponds with a great dilatation of the continent towards the east in the peninsula of Honduras, where the coast tends also suddenly, exactly east and west, from Cape Gracias à Dios to the Gulf of Amatique for 300 miles, after it had been previously running from north to south for the same distance. In the group of elevated volcanoes of Guatemala (lat. 14° 10′) the series again acquires its old direction, N. 45° W., which it continues as far as the Mexican boundary towards Chiapa and the isthmus of Huasacualco. North-West of the volcano of Soconusco to that 63 Mount Edgecombe, or the St. Lazarus mountain, upon the small island (Croze's Island, near Lisiansky), which is situated to the westward, near the northern half of the larger island Sitka or Baranow, in Norfolk Sound, was seen by Cook, and is a hill partly composed of basalt abounding in olivine, and partly of felspathic trachyte. Its height is only 2770 feet. Its last great eruption, which produced much pumice-stone, was in the year 1796 (Lutké, Voyage autour du Monde, 1836, t. iii, p. 15). Eight years afterwards Captain Lisiansky reached the summit, which contains a crater-lake. He found at that time no signs of activity anywhere on the mountain. of Tuxtla, not even an extinct trachytic cone has been discovered; in this quarter, granite abounding in quartz and mica-schist predominate. The volcanoes of Central America do not crown the adjacent mountain chains, but rise along the foot of the latter, usually completely separated from each other. The greatest elevations lie at the two extremities of the series. Towards the South, in Costa Rica, both seas are visible from the summit of the Irasu (the volcano of Cartago), to which, besides its elevation (11,081 feet), its central position contributes. To the south-east of Cartago there stand mountains of ten or eleven thousand feet: the Chiriqui (11,262 feet) and the Pico Blanco (11,740 feet). We know nothing of the nature of their rock, but they are probably unopened trachytic cones. Further towards the south-east, the elevations diminish in Veragua to six and five thousand feet. This appears also to be the average height of the volcanoes of Nicaragua and San Salvador; but towards the north-western extremity of the whole series, not far from the new city of Guatemala, two volcanoes again rise above 13,000 feet. The maxima consequently fall into the third group of my attempted hypsometric classification of volcanoes, coinciding with Etna and the Peak of Teneriffe, whilst the greater number of the heights lying between the two extremities, scarcely exceed Vesuvius by 2000 feet. The volcanoes of Mexico, New Granada, and Quito belong to the fifth group, and usually attain an elevation of more than 17,000 feet. Although the continent of Central America increases considerably in breadth from the isthmus of Panama, through Veragua, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, to the latitude of 1110, the great area of the lake of Nicaragua and the small elevation of its surface (scarcely 128 feet above the two seas), gives rise to such a degradation of the land exactly in this district, that by it an overflow of air from the Caribbean Sea into the Great South Sea is often caused, bringing danger to the voyager in the so-called Pacific 64 Even under the Spanish Government in 1781, the Spanish engineer, Don José Galisteo, had found for the surface of the Laguna of Nicaragua an elevation only six feet greater than that given by Baily in his different levellings in 1838 (Humboldt, Relation Historique. t. iii, p. 321). Ocean. The north-east storms thus excited have received the name of Papagayos, and sometimes rage without intermission for four or five days. They have the remarkable peculiarity that, during their continuance the sky usually remains quite cloudless. The name is borrowed from the part of the west coast of Nicaragua between Brito or Cabo Desolado and Punta S. Elena (from 11° 22′ to 10° 50′), which is called Golfo del Papagayo, and includes the small bays of Salinas and S. Elena to the south of the Puerto de San Juan del Sur. On my voyage from Guayaquil to Acapulco, I was able to observe the Papagayos in all their violence and peculiarity for more than two whole days (9th-11th March, 1803), although rather more to the south, in less than 9° 13' of latitude. The waves rose higher than I have ever seen them; and the constant visibility of the disc of the sun in the bright, blue arch of heaven, enabled me to measure the height of the waves by altitudes of the sun taken upon the ridge of the wave and in the trough, by a method which had not been tried at that time. All Spanish, English, and American voyagers ascribe the above-described storms of the Southern Ocean to the north-east trade-wind of the Atlantic. In a new work which I have undertaken with much 65 See Sir Edward Belcher, Voyage round the World, vol. i, p. 185. According to my chronometric longitude I was in the Papagayo-storm 19° 11' to the west of the meridian of Guayaquil, and consequently 99° 9′ west, and 880 miles west of the shore of Costa Rica. 66 My earliest work upon seventeen linear volcanoes of Guatemala and Nicaragua is contained in the Geographical Journal of Berghaus (Hertha, Bd. vi, 1826, pp. 131-161). Besides the old Chronista Fuentes (lib. ix, cap. 9), I could then only make use of the important work of Domingo Juarros, Compendio de la Historia de la Ciudad de Guatemala, and of the three maps by Galisteo (drawn in 1781, at the command of the Mexican Viceroy, Matias de Galvez), by José Rossi y Rubi (Alcalde Mayor de Guatemala, 1800), and by Joaquin Ysasi and Antonio de la Cerda (Alcalde de Granada) which I possessed principally in manuscript. In the French translation of his work upon the Canary Islands, Leopold von Buch has given a masterly extension of my first sketch (Descr. Physique des Isles Canaries, 1836, pp. 500-514), but the uncertainty of geographical synonyms and the confusion of names caused thereby gave rise to many doubts, which have been for the most part removed by the fine maps of Baily and Saunders; by Molina's Bosquejo de la Republica de Costa Rica, and by the great and very meritorious work of Squier (Nicaragua, its People and Monuments, assiduity, partly from materials already published, and partly from manuscript notes,-upon the linear volcanoes with Tables of the Comparative Heights of the Mountains in Central America, 1852, vol. i, p. 418, and vol. ii, p. 102). The important work which is promised us by Dr. Oerstedt, under the title of Schilderung der Naturverhältnisse von Nicaragua und Costa Rica, besides the admirable botanical and geological discoveries which constitute the primary object of the undertaking, will also throw light upon the geognostic nature of Central America. Dr. Oersted passed through that region in various directions from 1846 to 1848, and brought back a collection of rocks to Copenhagen. I am indebted to his friendly communications for interesting corrections of my fragmentary work. From a careful comparison of the materials with which I am acquainted, including those collected by Hesse, the Prussian Consul-General in Central America, which are of great value, I bring together the volcanoes of Central America in the following manner, proceeding from south to north :— Above the central plateau of Cartago (4648 feet), in the republic of Costa Rica (lat. 10° 9′) rise the three volcanoes of Turrialva, Irasu, and Reventado, of which the first two are still ignited. Volcan de Turrialva* (height about 11,000 feet) is, according to Oersted, only separated from the Irasu by a deep, narrow ravine. Its summit, from which columns of smoke rise, has not yet been ascended. The volcano Irasu*, also called the volcano of Cartago (11,100 feet) to the north-east of the volcano Reventado, is the principal vent of volcanic activity in Costa Rica, but still remarkably accessible, and towards the south divided into terraces in such a manner that one may on horseback, almost reach the elevated summit, from which the two oceans, the sea of the Antilles and the Pacific, may be seen at once. The cone of ashes and rapilli, which is about a thou sand feet in height, rises out of a wall of circumvallation (a crater of elevation). In the flatter, north-eastern part of the summit, lies the true crater, of 7500 feet in circumference, which has never emitted lava-streams. Its eruptions of scoriæ have often (1723, 1726, 1821, 1847) been accompanied by destructive earthquakes, the effect of which has been felt from Nicaragua or Rivas to Panama (Oersted). During a very recent ascent of the Irasu, in the beginning of May, 1855, by Dr. Carl Hoffmann, the crater of the summit and its eruptive orifices have been more accurately investigated. The altitude of the volcano is stated from a trigonometrical measurement by Galindo, at 12,000 Spanish feet, or, taking the vara cast.=0.43 of a toise, at 11,000 feet. (Bonplandia, Jahrgang, 1856, No. 3). El Reventado (about 9500 feet), with a deep crater, of which the southern margin has fallen in, and which was formerly filled with water. of Central America, twenty-nine volcanoes are numbered, whose former or present varied activity may be stated The volcano Barba (more than 8419 feet), to the north of San José, the capital of Costa Rica; with a crater which contains several small lakes. Between the volcanoes Barba and Orosi, there follows a series of volcanoes which intersects the principal chain, running S.E.-N.W. in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, almost in the opposite direction, east and west. Upon such a fissure stand, furthest to the eastward, Miravalles and Tenorio (each of these volcanoes is about 4689 feet); in the centre, to the south-east of Orosi, the volcano Rincon, also called Rincon de la Vieja (Squier, vol. ii, p. 102) which exhibits small eruptions of ashes every spring at the commencement of the rainy season; and furthest to the westward, near the little town of Alajuela, the volcano Votos* (7513 feet) which abounds in sulphur. Dr. Oersted compares this phenomenon of the direction of volcanic activity upon a transverse fissure, with the east and west direction, which I found in the Mexican volcanoes from sea to sea. Orosi,* still active, in the most southern part of the State of Nica ragua (5222 feet); probably the Volcan del Papagayo, on the chart of the Deposito Hidrografico. The two volcanoes, Mandeira and Ometepec* (4157 and 5222 feet) upon a small island in the western part of the Laguna de Nicaragua, named by the Aztec inhabitants of the district after these two mountains (ome tepetl signifies two mountains; see Buschmann, Aztekische Ortsnamen, pp. 178 and 171). The insular volcano Ometepec, erroneously named Ometep by Juarros (Hist. de Guatemala, t. i, p. 51), is still in activity. It is figured by Squier (vol. ii, p. 235). The extinct crater of the island Zapatera, but little elevated above the sea-level. The period of its ancient eruptions is quite unknown. The volcano of Momobacho, on the western shore of the Laguna de Nicaragua, somewhat to the south of the city of Granada. As this city is situated between the volcanoes of Momobacho (the place is also called Mombacho, Oviedo, Nicaragua, ed. Ternaux, p. 245), and Masaya, the pilots indicate sometimes the one and sometimes the other of these conical mountains by the indefinite name of the Volcano of Granada. The volcano Massaya (Masaya) which has already been treated of in detail (pp. 258-261) was once a Stromboli, but has been extinct since the great eruption of lava in 1670. According to the interesting reports of Dr. Scherzer (Sitzungsberichte der Philos. Hist. Classe der Akad. der Wiss. zu Wien, Bd. xx, s. 58) dense clouds of vapour were again emitted in April, 1853, from a newly opened crater. The volcano of Massaya is situated between the two lakes of Nicaragua and Managua to the west of the city of Granada. Massaya is not synonymous with Nindiri; but, as Dr. Oersted expresses himself, Massaya and Nindiri,* VOL. V. T |