TRUE VOLCANOES. 261 



when they were drawn up again they should say that they 

 had found great riches, and that the Infierno of Masaya, 

 deserved in future to be called el Paraiso del Masaya. The 

 operation was afterwards repeated several times, until the 

 Governor of the neighbouring city of Granada, conceived 

 some suspicion of the deceit, or perhaps of a fraud upon the 

 revenue, and forbad any " further descents on ropes into the 

 crater.'* This took place in the summer of 1538 ; but in 

 1551 Juan Alvarez, the Dean of the Chapter of Leon, again 

 received from Madrid the naive permission "to open the 

 volcano, and procure the gold that it contained." Such was 

 the popular credulity of the sixteenth century ! But even in 

 Naples in the year 1822, Monticelli and Covelli were obliged 

 to prove by chemical analysis, that the ashes thrown out 

 from Vesuvius onthe 28th October contained no gold ! M 



The volcano of Jzalco, situated on the west coast of Cen- 

 tral America, 32 miles northwards from San Salvador, and 

 eastward from the harbour of Sonsonate, broke out 1 1 years 

 after the volcano of Jorullo, deep in the interior of Mexico. 

 Both eruptions took place in a cultivated plain, and after 

 the prevalence of earthquakes and subterranean noises 

 (bramidos) for several mouths. A conical hill rose in the 

 Llano de Izalco, and with it simultaneously an eruption of 

 lava poured from its summit on the 23rd February, 1770. It 

 still remains undecided, how much is to be attributed, in the 

 rapidly increasing height, to the upheaval of the soil, and 

 how much to the accumulation of erupted scoriae, ashes and 

 tufa-masses ; only this much is certain, that since the first erup- 

 tion, the new volcano, instead of soon becoming extinguished 

 like Jorullo, has remained uninterruptedly active, and often 

 serves as a beacon light for mariners near the landing place 

 in the Bay of Acajutla. Four fiery eruptions are counted 

 in an hour, and the great regularity of the phenomenon has 

 astonished its few accurate observers. 6 * The violence of the 

 eruptions was variable, but not the time of their occurrence. 

 The elevation which the volcano of Izalco has now attained 

 since the last eruption of 1825, is calculated at about 1600 

 feet, nearly the same as the elevation of Jorullc above the 



55 Humboldt, Views of Nature, p. 368. 



56 Squier, Nicaragua, its People and Monuments, vol. ii, p. 104. (John 

 Bailey, Central America, 1850, p. 75). 



