NOTES. IXXXV 



application to tlie eyelids, both to relieve pain, and particularly for colouring the 

 eyebrows. At three paces from the Chirnsera, the warmth from it is difficult to 

 bear. A stick of dry wood held in the opening near the flame, but without 

 touching it, takes fire. Where the ancient walls lean against the rock, gas 

 escapes from the interstices between the stones, which, probably because either 

 the temperature is lower, or the mixture is somewhat different, does not ignite 

 spontaneously, but burns when lighted. Eight feet below the large flame, in 

 the interior of the ruins, there is an opening, six feet deep, but only half as 

 wide, which probably was once vaulted over, for, in the damp part of the year, a 

 spring of water breaks out in it by the side of a cleft, over .which a little flame 

 plays." Berg shows, on a topographical plan, the geographical relations of the 

 alluvial strata, of the (tertiary ?) limestone, and of the serpentine-rock. 



( 37G ) p. 253. The oldest and most important notice on the volcano of 

 Masaya is in a manuscript, edited fourteen years ago by the meritorious histo- 

 rical collector Ternaux-Compans, of Oviedo's Historia de Nicaragua (cap. v. to 

 x.); see p. 115 197. The French translation forms a volume of the Voyages, 

 Relations, et Memoires originaux pour servir a 1'Histoire et a la Decouverte de 

 1'Ame'rique. Compare also Lopez de Gomara, Historia general de las Indias 

 (Zaragoza, 1553), fol. ex. b; and, among very recent writings, Squier, Nica- 

 ragua, its People, Scenery, and Monuments, 1853, vol. i. p. 211 223, and 

 vol. ii. p. 17. The volcano of Masaya was then so celebrated that, in the Royal 

 Library at Madrid, there is a monograph upon it entitled: Entrada y Descubri- 

 miento del Volcan de Masaya que esta en la Prov. de Nicaragua, fecha por 

 Juan Sanchez del Portero. The author was one of those who let themselves 

 down into the -crater in the strange attempts of the Dominican Fray Bias de 

 Inesta. (Oviedo, Hist, de Nicaragua, p. 141.) 



( 3 ") p. 254. In the French translation .of Ternaux-Compans (the Spanish 

 original has not been published), it is said, p. 123 and 132: " On ne pent 

 cependant dire qu'il sorte pre'cisement une flamme du cratere, mais bien une 

 fume'e aussi ardente que du feu ; on ne la voit pas de loin pendant le jour, mais 

 bien de nuit. Le volcan e'claire autant que le fait la lune quelques jours avant 

 d'etre dans son plein." This remark, made so long ago on the kind of illumina- 

 tion of a crater, and of the strata of air over it, is not without bearing on the 

 doubts which have of late often been raised as to the disengagement of hydrogen 

 gas from the craters of volcanoes. If, in its ordinary state, here alluded to, El 

 Infierno de Masaya did not erupt scorias or ashes (Gomara adds: cosa que hazen 

 otros volcanes), yet it has sometimes had real eruptions of lava, of which pro- 

 bably the latest was in 1670. Since then the volcano has become completely 

 extinct, after a perpetual light from it having been observed for 140 years. 



