Account of Travels letwe$n the Tiopia. 39 



an aperture has been formed in the mountain <f? Sineec to 

 drain otf the waters from the valley of Mexico to the river 

 Montezuma. They then passed Ouerct.iro, by Salamanca 

 and the fertile plains of Yrapiialo, to Guanaxuato, a town 

 which contains oO,OyO inhabitants: it is situated in a narrow 

 defite, and celebrated by its mines, which are of far greater 

 consequence than those of Potosi. 



The mine of count de Valeaciana, which has given birth 

 to a considerable town on a hill which thirty vears ago 

 scarcely afforded pasture to goats, is already 1810 feet m 

 perpendicular depth. It is the deepest and richest in the 

 world ; the annual profit of the proprietors havmg never 

 been less than three millions of livr*s^ and it sometimes 

 amounts to five or six. 



After two months employed in measurements and gc«- 

 jogical researches, and after having examined tlie thermal 

 waters of Comaffilb'^, the temperature of which is 11° of 

 fteaumur higher than those of the Philippine islands, which 

 Sonncrat considers as the hottest in the world, our travel - 

 Jers proceeded through the valley of St. Jago, where they 

 thought they saw in several lakes at the summits fiF the ba- 

 saltic mountains so many craters of burnt-out volcanoes, to 

 Valladolid, the capital of the antient kingdom of Michoa- 

 can. They thence descended, notwithstanding the con- 

 tinual autumnal rains, by Patzquaro, situated on the margin 

 of a very extensive lake towards the coa?i of the I'acific 

 Ocean, to (he plains of Jorullo, where in the course of one 

 night in 1759, during one of the greatest convulsions which 

 the globe ever experienced, there issued frfm the earth a 

 volcano 1494 feet in height, surrounded by more than 

 2000 mouths still emitting smoke. Thev descended into 

 the burning crater of ihe great volcano to the perpendicular 

 depth of 2,58 feet, jumping over fissures which exhaled 

 flaming sulphurated hydrogen c;as. After great danger, 

 arising from the britllencss of the basaltic and sienitic lava, 

 they reached nearlv the bottom of the crater, and analvsed 

 the air in it, which was i'ouud to be surcharged in an extra- 

 ordinary manner with carbonic acid. 



From the kingdom of Michoacan, one of the most agree- 

 able and most fertile countries in the Indies, thev returned 

 to Mexico by the high plateau of Tolurca, in which they 

 measured the snowy mountain of the same name, ascending 

 to its highest summit, the peak of Fraide, which ru^es 2301 

 toises above the level of the sea : they visited also at Toluc- 

 ca the famous hand-tree the rlubnntlwsta'viov of M. Cer- 

 vantes, a genus which presents a phjenomenon almost 



unique, 



