32 ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 



mile in diameter), was somehow connected with the 

 electric excitement of the upper atmosphere produced 

 by this enormous discharge of smoke and ashes. The 

 destruction of life in Iceland was frightful : 9000 men, 

 11,000 cattle, 28,000 horses, and 190,000 sheep per- 

 ished ; mostly by suffocation. The lava ejected has 

 been computed to have amounted in volume to more 

 than twenty cubic miles. 



(42.) We shall now proceed to still more remote re- 

 gions, and describe, in as few words as may be, two im- 

 mense eruptions, one in Mexico, in the year 1759 ; the 

 other in the island of Sumbawa in the Eastern Archi- 

 pelago, in 1815. 



(43.) I ought to mention, by way of preliminary, that 

 almost the whole line of coast of South and Central 

 America, from Mexico southwards as far as Valparaiso 

 that is to say, nearly the whole chain of the Andes is 

 one mass of volcanos. In Mexico and Central America 

 there are two and twenty, and in Quito, Peru, and Chili, 

 six and twenty more, in activity ; and nearly as many 

 more extinct ones, any one of which may at any moment 

 break out afresh. This does not prevent the country 

 from being inhabited, fertile, and well cultivated. Well : 

 in a district of Mexico celebrated for the growth of the 

 finest cotton, between two streams called Cuitimba and 

 San Pedro, which furnished water for irrigation, lay the 

 farm and homestead of Don Pedro de Jurullo, one of 

 the richest and most fertile properties in that country. 

 He was a thriving man, and lived in comfort as a large 

 proprietor, little expecting the mischief that was to be- 



