TRUE VOLCANOES. 247 



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 Bias del Castillo, who enter- 

 tained the absurd opinion that the fluid lava in the crater 

 was liquid gold, and associated himself with an equally ava- 

 ricious Flemish Franciscan, Fray Juan de Gandavo. The 

 pair availing themselves of the credulity of the Spanish set- 

 tlers, established a joint-stock company to obtain the metal 

 at the common cost. They themselves, Oviedo adds satiric- 

 ally, 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 Cas- 

 tilla del Oro, Thomas de Verlenga, by Fray Bias del Cas- 

 tillo (the same person who is denominated Fray Bias de In- 

 esta in the writings of Gomara, Benzoni, and Herrera), was 

 only made known (in 1840) by the discovery of Oviedo's 

 work upon Nicaragua. Fray Bias, 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 coloring 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 thirty 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 re- 

 mained for a whole night in this part of the solid crater bot- 

 tom, 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 



* "The three companions agreed to say that they had found great 

 riches; and Fray Bias, 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 forever in their opinion that the volcano con- 

 tained gold and silver in a state of fusion!" (Oviedo, Descr. de Nic- 

 aragua, cap. x., p. 186 and 196). The Cronista de las Indias is, how- 

 ever, very indignant (cap. 5) that Fray Bias 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 cour- 

 ageous Diego de Ordaz, who boasted of having reached the crater of 

 the Popocatepetl when Cortez first penetrated into the valley of Mex- 

 ico, bore this volcano as an heraldic distinction, as did Oviedo the 



