270 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
the 1st of May the clocks struck six; but the sun did not, as 
usual in the tropics, answer to the call. The darkness was 
still intense, and grew more intense as the morning wore on. 
A slow and silent rain of impalpable dust was falling over 
the whole island. 
“The trade-wind had fallen dead; the everlasting roar 
of the surf was gone; and the only noise was the crashing 
of the branches snapped by the weight of the clammy dust. 
About one o’clock the veil began to lift, a lurid sunlight 
stared in from the horizon, but all was black overhead. 
Gradually the dust-cloud drifted away; the island saw the 
sun once more, and saw itself inches deep in black, and in this | 
case fertilising, dust. 
“Those who will recollect that Barbadoes is eighty miles 
to windward of St. Vincent, and that a strong breeze from 
east-north-east is usually blowing from the former island to 
the latter, will be able to imagine, not to measure, the force 
of an explosion which must have blown the dust several miles 
into the air above the region of the trade-wind. Whether 
into a totally calm stratum or into that still higher one in 
which the heated south-west wind is hurrying continually 
from the tropics toward the pole.” + 
I have quoted this graphic account of the great volcanic 
eruption of St. Vincent in 1812 from Canon Kingsley’s 
delightful work to impress on my readers, in more eloquent 
language than I can command, the fact of great explosions 
having taken place in recent times similar in character, 
though much inferior in extent and force, to that by which I 
believe the great basin of the Lake of Masaya and similar 
basins in the same and adjoining Pacific provinces have been 
blasted out. I do not shut my eyes to the fact that great 
as was the force in operation in 1812 at St. Vincent, that 
necessary to excavate the great chasm at Masaya was incom- 
parably greater. No one is more disinclined than I am to 
invoke the aid of greater natural forces in former times than 
are now in existence. But I believe there is good reason to 
infer that at the close of the glacial period volcanic energy 
was much more intense than now. So strained is the earth’s 
crust at some parts that it is surmised that even a great 
difference in the pressure of the atmosphere such as occurs 
1 At Last, by Charles Kingsley, vol. i. p. go. 
