a?id the subterraneous Lakes of Piirace. 117 



and other incoherent matters. These liquid ejections spread 

 sterility over the plains for centuries. Muddy clays [lodazales) 

 covered a space of more than four square leagues, when, in 

 the night of the 19th of June 1698, the Peak of Carguai- 

 razo, the actual height of which exceeds 15,700 feet, sunk 

 down with a noise. The lakes of sulphureous water that we 

 found at the summit of Purace, explain what the inhabit- 

 ants of Quito report of the fetid smell of the waters which de- 

 scend sometimes from the sides of the volcanos during great 

 eruptions. Struck with the novelty of these phaenomena, 

 which we only mention here, the Spanish Conqiiistadorcshave, 

 since the sixteenth century, distinguished two sorts of volca- 

 noes, — the Jire volcanos and the 'joater volcanos [volcanes de 

 fuego y de agua). This last denomination, which one might 

 say was invented to bring near to each other the volcanists and 

 the 7ieptunists, and to put an end to the famous schism of 

 dogmatical geology, has been applied especially to the moun- 

 tains of Guatimala and of the Archipelago of the Philippines. 

 The Volcan de anff/a, placed between the volcano of Guatimala* 

 and that of Pocaya, ruined, by torrents of water and stones 

 which it sent forth the 11th of September 1541, the town of 

 Almolonga, which is the ancient capital of the country. This 

 mountain does not attain the limit of perpetual snow, but it 

 remains covered with snow several months of the year. When 

 we call to mind the confusion of the accounts that are found 

 in our own days in the public papers of P^urope, every time 

 that ^^tna or Vesuvius are in action, we cannot complain of 

 the uncertainty in which the chroniclers of Spanish America 

 and \\\Q.Conq%iistadorcsoH\\e sixteenth century leave us respect- 

 ing the phenomena of T'o/tY/;//c inundations, so worthy of enga- 

 ging the attention of natural philoso))hers. During the eruption 

 of/P^tnain 1792, there opened on thedeclivity of the volcano, 

 3 miles from the crater, a gulff from which issued for se- 

 veral weeks water niixed with ashes, scoriae, and clays. These 

 liquid ejections, which must not be confounded with the phse- 



* Juarros, Compcndio de la Hhlorin de Gimlcmaln, 1800, t. i. p. 7~ ; t. ii. 

 p. 351. — Rciiiesal, llml. dc la Proviiwia dc San-Viccntc, lib. iv. cap. G. — 

 Also in tlie great eruption of the volcano of the [)rovince of Sinano in 

 Japan (July 27, 17^>'5), boiling waters were mixed with the rapilli. {Me moire 

 tur la Di/nattic rcgnnnlc dcx Dj()[i,()inix. 1820, p. 182.) 



\ Ferrara, Dcscr. dtW F.lna, p. l.'?2. As this pha'noincnon seems to 

 have some relation to that of the Mnifa dc I'clilco, which contains the carbu- 

 rets of hydrotjen, and which I made known at niy rctnrn from America, ( 

 obtained very lately an explanatory nmniiscript note from the learned Si- 

 cilian prf)lo;{ist, M. Kerrara, on the nniddy eruption of i'Etna observed 

 March 'j:., 17r»2. 



' nouu'tioii 



