292 ANATHAMA MARANATHA. 



Cuitamba, because in several parts of the Malpays great 

 masses of water were still heard to run from east to west. 



In the opinion of the Indians, these extraordinary 

 transformations, the surface of the earth raised up and 

 burst by the volcanic fire, and the mountains of scoria 

 and ashes heaped together, were the work of the monks, 

 the greatest, no doubt, which they have ever produced in 

 the two hemispheres! In the cottage which Humboldt 

 occupied in the plains of Jorullo, his Indian host related 

 to him, that, in 1759, Capuchin missionaries came to 

 preach at the plantation of San Pedro, and not having 

 met with a favourable reception (perhaps not having got 

 so good a dinner as they expected), they poured out the 

 most horrible and unheard of imprecations against the 

 then beautiful and fertile plain, and prophesied that in 

 the first place the plantation would be swallowed up by 

 flames rising out of the earth, and that afterwards the 

 ambient air would cool to such a degree, that the neigh- 

 bouring mountains would for ever remain covered with 

 snow and ice. The former of these maledictions having 

 already produced such fatal effects, the Indians contem- 

 plated in the increasing coolness of the volcano, the 

 sinister presage of a perpetual winter. 



After visiting the volcano of Jorullo, and descending, 

 on the 19th of September, two hundred and fifty feet into 

 the burning crater of the central cone, Humboldt re- 

 turned to the capital. The arrangement of his botanical 

 and geological collections, and the regulation and calcu- 

 lation of his barometric and trigonometric measurements, 

 detained him and Bon pi and there until the beginning of 

 January, 1804. It would have been difficult to have 

 found anywhere, least of all in the dolce far niente of 



