246 COSMOS. 



widely spread in the beginning of the 16th century under 

 the name of el Infierno de Masaya, and gave occasion for re- 

 ports to the Emperor Charles V., is situated between the 

 two lakes of Nicaragua and Managua, to the southwest .of the 

 charming Indian village of Nindiri. For centuries together it 

 presented the same rare phenomenon that we have described 

 in the volcano of Stromboli. From the margin of the crater 

 the waves of fluid lava, set in motion by vapors, were seen 

 rising and falling in the incandescent chasm. The Spanish 

 historian, Gonzalez Fernanflo 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 Ma- 

 saya 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 pro- 

 duced, was at that time reckoned among 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 per- 

 petual luminous phenomenon, as Oviedo definitely and acute- 

 ly states, is not caused by an actual flame,* but by vapors 

 illuminated from below. It is said to have been of such in- 

 tensity that on the road from the volcano toward Granada, 



wonderful expeditions of the Dominican monk, Fray Bias de Inesta 

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



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

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

 can not, 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 prob- 

 lematical 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 in- 

 dicated the Hell of Masaya did not throw out scoria? 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 per- 

 petual luminosity had been observed for 140 years. Stephens, who as- 

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

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

 Maribios, see Buschmann's ingenious ethnographical researches, Ucber 

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



