TRUE VOLCANOES. 295 



fceyond San Pedro Churumucu. In the Hacienda de Jorullo, 

 during the general nocturnal flight, they forgot to remove a 

 deaf and dumb negro slave. A mulatto had the humanity to 

 return and save him while the house was still standing. It 

 is still related that he was found kneeling, with a consecrated 

 taper in his hand, before the picture of Nuestra Senora de 

 Guadalupe. 



According to the tradition, widely and concordantly spread 

 among the natives, the eruption, during the first days, con- 

 sisted of great masses of rock, scoriae, sand, and ashes, but 

 always combined with an effusion of muddy water. In the 

 memorable report, already mentioned, of the 19th of October, 

 1759, the author of which was a man who, possessing an 

 accurate knowledge of the locality, describes what had only 

 just taken place, it is expressly said : Que espele el dicho 

 Volcan arena, ceniza y agua. All eye-witnesses relate (I 

 translate from the description which the Intendant, Colonel 

 Riano, and the German Mining Commissary, Franz Fischer, 

 who had passed into the Spanish service, have given of the 

 condition of the volcano of Jorullo on the 10th of March, 

 1789), " that before the terrible mountain made its appear, 

 ance (antes de reventar y aparecerse este terrible cerro) the 

 earthquakes and subterranean noises became more frequent ; 

 but on the day of the eruption itself the flat soil was seen to 

 rise perpendicularly (se observo, que el plan de la tierra se 

 levantaba perpendicularmente), and the whole became more 

 or less inflated, so that blisters (vexigones) appeared, of which 

 the largest is now the volcano (de los que el mayor es hoy el 

 cerro del volcan). These inflated blisters, of very various 

 sizes, and partly of a tolerably regular conical form, subse- 

 quently burst (estas ampollas, gruesas vegigas 6 conos dife- 

 rentemente regulares en sus figuras y tamanos, reventaron 

 despues), and threw boiling-hot earthy mud from their or- 

 ifices (tierras hervidas y calientes), as well as scoriaceous 

 stony masses (piedras cocidas? y fundidas), which are still 

 found, at an immens'e distance, covered with black stony 

 masses." 



These historical records, which we might, indeed, wish to 

 see more complete, agree perfectly with what I learn from 

 the mouths of the natives fourteen years after the ascent of 

 Antonio de Riano. To the questions, whether " the castle 



and Espelde. Subsequently (1791), in the naval astronomical expedi- 

 tion of Malaspina, the botanists Mocino and Don Martin Sesse visit- 

 ed Jorullo from the Pacific coast. 



