MR. CALDCLEUGH ON THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF COSEGUINA. 
29 
slightest breath of air drove into every interstice. At midnight violent explosions were 
heard, and, a quarter of an hour after, a severe shock was experienced, the forerunner 
of new eruptions. At 5 o’clock on the morning of the 23rd it was sufficiently light 
to observe that a fresh eruption had taken place from Cosegiiina, and at 8 o’clock the 
darkness had returned as on the 20th. At 9 o’clock the obscurity was complete, and 
new and new awful echoes of vast discharges of volcanic matter, attended with flashes 
of lightning in all directions, convinced the panic-stricken inhabitants that the day 
of judgement had arrived. 
No pen, says the Governor, is capable of describing the scene of dismay which 
prevailed. On the 24th the atmosphere became clearer. The houses were covered 
to the depth of eight inches with the ashes which had fallen, and many small birds 
and animals were found suffocated in them. Deer and other wild animals sought the 
town for protection, and the banks of the neighbouring streams were strewed with 
dead fish. 
It would be but useless to tire the Society by giving extracts of all the reports 
made from different places within the sphere of the eruption. I shall confine myself 
to stating that at Macuelizo, in Segovia, the colour of the sand which fell was black ; 
and on the Hacienda of Cosegiiina, belonging to Don Bernardo Benevio, eight leagues 
to the southward of the crater, the ashes covered the ground to the depth of three 
yards and a half, destroying the fine woods and dwellings. 
It also avails little to mention the great mortality which prevailed among the cattle. 
Thousands perished, and those which after the eruption reached the abodes of men, 
presented sad spectacles ; their bodies in many instances being one mass of scorched 
flesh. 
Within the bay of Fonseca, and two miles from the volcano, it is stated that two 
islands have been thrown up, of from 200 to 300 yards in length, their surface, but a 
few yards above the sea, presenting, it is said, a mass of scoria and ashes : their 
elevation has probably been caused by the heavy fall of scoriaceons matter on shoals 
previously existing in those places. However probable, the evidence is not conclusive, 
although the fact of the beach on the eastern or inner side of the promontory being- 
extended by the ashes about 800 feet further out, gives additional reason to credit 
the statement. 
On the 3rd of March, nearly two months after this great eruption, the volcano re- 
mained in a state of activity, but not ejecting ashes. By some geologists it has been 
considered that heavy eruptions of fine scoriaceous matter tend, by their falling again 
into the crater, to restore the volcano to a quiescent state, and that therefore this 
phenomenon more usually attends the conclusion of an explosion. In this particular 
instance it appears that the first effect of the explosion was to blow out of the crater, 
and finely triturate, the scoria and ashes left there twenty-six years before. 
In the districts of Segovia, Comagagua, Choluteca, Nacaome, and Tegusigalpa, 
immense deluges of rain followed these clouds of ashes, and again gave rise to a fetid, 
