JS'collthtc 2£an In Jii'lcafagu((. — Crairford. 165 
mile wide, near the fissure, and widening gradually, for an extent 
of three or four miles into a forest of large exogenous trees, leav- 
ing over its course a mass of scoria?, obsidian, vesicular lava 
and stones, which now look as if fresh and hi^t. Many trees 
along the edge of this flow of lava were carbonized, and parts of 
them are yet standing. The ashes and cinders then sent out 
with explosive force through the fissure, have been washed awaj- 
down into the lakes. The volcanic activit}' created no great dis- 
turbance in the present city of Masaya, situated on the side of 
the volcanic mountain, opposite to the fissure, and the gshes 
reached to the city of Managua ten miles distant, onl}' b}' occasional 
gusts of wind, not of sufficient quantity or temperature to 
cause any other unpleasantness than great apprehension of 
danger. 
Anterior to this activity in 17G2 we have no relial)le human 
record of any other outburst from this volcano, and physical evi- 
dences indicate that it had l^een quiet for very many centuries, 
possibly for one or more geological epochs. 
In comparing these facts in reference to the eruptions with 
other volcanoes the history of which is better known, l)ut which 
have far more deeply eroded sides, of which facts are obtained, 
we find, that the materials forming, in considerably large part, 
the montecules, cones and sides of Etna, are easily loosened by 
rains and can be washed down in large quantities by torrents as 
at volcano Masaya; also that each, in its own locality, has sea- 
sons of heavy rains ; but the lava which poured from Etna four 
hundred years B. C, and stopped the Carthagcnian army in its 
march against Syracuse, is now, much of it, exposed on the 
earths surface where it flowed and is not covered by sedimentary 
materials, washed down, from Etnas side, nor covered by floods of 
mud. Yet, in less than ten miles from volcano MasaN'a, the 
stratification near lake Managua of materials ejected from vol- 
canoes and washed down and deposited, is hard and more than 
twelve feet thick at its least depth, above the hard stratum 
deeply impressed by human footprints, and these impressions of 
feet were made when the surface of that stratum was oi\\y partly 
hardened or in a stiflf , muddy condition. Any estimate in years of 
thetime necessary toform and then to harden an ejecta conglomerate 
so slowly as not to fissure, such as each of these strata near hike 
Managua, and the time intervening between the drying and 
