208 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



tlie plateaux exceed 6,500 feet ; that of Totonicapam rises even to 8,000 feet, while 

 the chief summits tower some 3,000 feet still higher. The great central plain of 

 Guatemala, lying on the waterparting between both oceanic slopes, has a mean 

 altitude of 5,000 feet, and is dominated by the crater-shaped peaks of the Antigua 

 district, which reach an elevation of 10,000 feet. Lastly, in the eastern provinces 

 the uplands do not appear greatly to exceed a mean height of -3,300 feet, with 

 culminating peaks from 4,000 to 5,000 feet. 



South-east of the active Tacana volcano, which has been chosen as the boun- 

 darj between Mexico and Guatemala, the next igneous cone is Tajomulco, which 

 also exceeds 11,660 feet; it dominates the plateau under the form of a huge 

 and perfectly regular cone clothed at its base with dense forests. The Indians 

 here find large quantities of sulphur, which led Dollfus and Mont-Serrat to sup- 

 pose that the deposits were constantly renewed by solfataras as fast as they were 

 cleared away. Here flames were distinctly seen shooting up by Bernouilli in 1863. 

 Beyond Tajomulco no burning mountains occur till Quezaltenango is reached. 

 This group comprises three cones disposed north and south, the northern, some 

 ten miles from the town, being a mere hillock 600 or 700 feet high. But the 

 southern, Santa Maria, whose superb peak, 12,400 feet high, is visible from the sea, 

 is one of the most imposing mountains in Guatemala. Like the other it has been 

 extinct from time immemorial, and dense forests now clothe both its flanks and 

 the crater. In most of the Central American eruptive groups the southern 

 volcanoes have remained longest active; but here it is the central cone, the Cerro 

 Quemado, called also the Quezaltenango volcano, that still continues in a dis- 

 turbed state. Less elevated than Santa Maria, the Cerro Quemado (10,250 feet) 

 in no way presents the aspect of a typical volcano. Its symmetry was doubtless 

 destroyed during the last eruption of 1785, when the entire terminal cone was 

 blown away, leaving in the place of the crater a spacious irregular plain covered 

 with a chaos of boulders, between which fumeroles are now seen to rise. Since 

 then it has been quiescent. 



East of the Quemado and beyond the deep gorge of the Rio Samala rises Mount 

 Zunil, or the " Volcano," as it is emphatically called by the natives. Yet no 

 record remains of any eruption, nor has any explorer yet discovered, in the dense 

 forests clothing its flanks, the aperture through which the lavas were formerly 

 ejected from this cone, which, like those of the surrounding district, consists of 

 trachytic porphyry. About eighteen miles farther on, and in a line with the axis of 

 this igneous system, the extinct San Pedro (8,300 feet) raises its pyramidal peak 

 near the south-west corner of Lake Atitlan. About ten miles farther east three 

 other cones, connected at their base, are disposed north and south transversely to 

 the main chain. The two northern peaks, both about 10,000 feet high, terminate 

 in small craters already overgrown with vegetation ; but the underground forces 

 are still active in the southern member of the group, which is commonly known as 

 the Atitlan volcano, and which towers to a height of 11,800 feet. At the time 

 of the conquest, Atitlan was in a state of commotion, and when the natives heard 

 the continuous rumblings in the interior of the mountain, they threw a young 



