328 The American Geologist. November, I'joi. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
Heavy rains and possible volcanic action in Nicaragua. — Rain 
has fallen in western Nicaragua for one to three hours each day, dur- 
ing the past eighty days ; most frequently they have been torrental rains. 
Hooding the streets in the cities of Granada and Managua eight to ten 
inches deep and rushing in rapid currents into the lakes Nicaragua and 
Managua. 
The result is that the water in these lakes is now for this season 
of the year several feet higher than remembered by reliable citizens to 
have been since the high water in 1859-61. 
Because of the unusually large rainfall thus far, this year, it is 
quite probable that next December and January [usual high-wati^r 
months annually in the lakes above named] the water in lakes Nicara- 
gua and Managua, will be more than two feet higher than the remem- 
bered by reliable natives, high-water years 1859-61,, when they were 
about ten feet higher [so reliable people have declared to me] than 
when measured by the engineer corps of the Isthmean Canal Commis- 
sion 1898-99-1900. 
There appears to be a periodic time of about forty years of un- 
usually high water — far above the usual hight. I am endeavoring to as- 
certain if there are not records, in the archives of the old Roman 
Catholic churches, some of them established in Nicaragua before A. D. 
1600, of unusually high-water in these lakes — but it will probably take 
months of search among the confused mass of papers in each church 
before ascertaining whether such records exist. 
What effect the pressure of this unknown stage of water wiU have 
in, say next October, November and December, on the semi-slumbering 
to apparently nearly extinict volcanoes in and near them, is looked for- 
ward to by me with much interest, because, from more than fifteen 
years of observations and studies of volcanic masses in the tropical 
Americas, I have formed the opinion that the varying pressure of wa- 
ter in and above the numerous fissures is most frequently the cause of 
volcanic activity. The fissures referred to are observable for hundreds 
of feet from the base of the volcano when the water surrounding it, ^r 
adjacent to it, is at a low stage, or traceable for miles in the earth near 
its surface when the volcano is not surrounded by, nor adjacent to, a 
large volume of water. These fissures are the escape, or safety valves, 
of apparently slumbering volcanoes, permitting high tension gases to 
escape as they near an exploding condition, except when the pressure 
of water in the lakes and bays surrounding or in part surrounding the 
volcanic mass becomes so great as to repress them. These gases are 
under pressure from the superheated magma formed miles down be- 
neath the earth's surface. J. Crawford. 
Managua, Nicaragua, August 31st, 1901. 
Second edition of the Geological mah of West Virginia. — The 
new geological map of West Virginia first published under date of 
