TRUE VOLCANOES. 259 



described in the volcano of Stromboli. From the margin of 

 the crater, the waves of fluid lava, set in motion by vapours, 

 were seen rising and falling in the incandescent chasm. The 

 Spanish historian, Gonzalez Fernando de Oviedo, first 

 ascended the Masaya in July 1529, and made comparisons 

 with Vesuvius, which he had previously visited (1501), in 

 the suite of the Queen of Naples as her xefe de guardaropa. 

 The name Masaya, belongs to the Chorotega language 

 of ^Nicaragua, and signifies burning mountain. The volcano, 

 surrounded by a wide lava-field (mal-pays), which it has 

 probably itself produced, was at that time reckoned amongst 

 the mountain group of the "nine burning Maribios." In its 

 ordinary condition, says Oviedo, the surface of the lava, 

 upon which black scoriae float, stands several hundred feet 

 below the margin of the crater ; but sometimes the ebullition 

 is suddenly so great, that the lava nearly reaches the upper 

 margin. The perpetual luminous phenomenon, as Oviedo 

 definitely and acutely states, is not caused by an actual 

 flame, 53 but by vapours illuminated from below. It is saiu to 

 have been of such intensity that on the road from the volcano 

 towards Granada, at a distance of more than three leagues, 

 the illumination of the district was almost equal to that of 

 the full moon. 



Eight years after Oviedo, the volcano was ascended by 

 the Dominican monk, Fray Bias del Castillo, who enter- 



53 In the French translation of Ternaux-Compans (the Spanish 

 original has never been published), we find at pp. 123 and 132 : "It 

 cannot, however, be said precisely that a flame issues from the crater, 

 but a smoke as hot as fire ; it is not seen from far during the day, but 

 is well seen at night. The volcano gives as much light as the moon a 

 few days before it is at the full." This old observation upon the pro- 

 blematical mode of illumination of a crater, and the strata of air lying 

 above it, is not without importance, on account of the doubt, so often 

 raised in recent times, as to the disengagement of hydrogen gas from 

 the craters of volcanoes. Although in the ordinary condition here indi- 

 cated the Hell of Masaya did not throw out scoriae or ashes (Gomara 

 adds, cosa que hazen otros volcanes], it has nevertheless sometimes had 

 true eruptions of lava; the last of which probably occurred in the year 

 1670. Since that date the volcano has been quite extinct, after a 

 perpetual luminosity had been observed for 140 years. Stephens, who 

 ascended it in 1840, found no perceptible trace of ignition. Upon the 

 Chorotega language, the signification of the word Masaya, and the Mari- 

 bios, see Buschmann's ingenious ethnographical researches, Ueber die 

 Aztekischen Ortsnamen, s. 130, 140, and 171. 



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