350 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. XIX. 



will be readily received ; and I should not myself have 

 advanced it if I could in any other way account for the 

 phenomena. Fortunately, within historical times, there 

 have been volcanic outbursts, not of such magnitude, 

 certainly, as was required to excavate the basin of the 

 lake of Masaya, but still of sufficient extent to show 

 that such an origin is not beyond the limits of 

 possibility. 



Thus in the same line of volcanic energy, not far from 

 the boundary line of the states of Nicaragua and San 

 Salvador, there was an eruption of the volcano of Cosa- 

 guina, on the 20th of January, 1835, when dense volumes 

 of dust and ashes, and fragments of rocks, were hurled up 

 in the air and deposited over the country around. The 

 vast quantity of material thrown out by this explosion 

 may be gathered from the fact that one hundred and 

 twenty miles away, near the volcano of San Miguel, the 

 dust was so thick that it was quite dark from four o'clock 

 in the evening until nearly noon of the next day ; and 

 even at that distance there was deposited a layer of fine 

 ashes four inches deep. The noise of the explosion was 

 heard at the city of Guatemala, four hundred miles to the 

 westward, and at Jamaica, eight hundred miles to the 

 north- east. 



In St. Vincent, in the West Indies, there was a great 

 eruption on April 27th, 1812, which continued for three 

 days, and was heard six hundred and thirty miles away 

 on the llanos of Caraccas. This great eruption has been 

 so graphically narrated by Canon Kingsley that I shall 

 once more quote from his eloquent pages. " That single 

 explosion relieved an interior pressure upon the crust of 

 the earth which had agitated sea and land from the 



