480 
THE VOLCANOES OF GUATEMALA 
The eruption cloud rose to a great height. It was seen from the 
sea. The captain of one steamer* measured the height with a sextant, 
and recorded it as 17 to 18 miles. Another put it as much as 30, but this 
may be merely an estimate. The sounds accompanying the eruption 
were loud, and, as has been observed elsewhere, were heard even louder 
at distant places than close to the mountain. Thus at Guatemala city, 
the capital, the detonations were at times so strong that they were 
supposed to proceed from the neighbouring volcanoes. 
There is no evidence of the occurrence of any incandescent avalanche 
or hot blast like those which occurred in St. Yincent and Martinique, 
but there are unconfirmed rumours of explosions having taken place in 
the hot ash, like those which occurred in the islands just mentioned, 
and which were there traced to the action of water on that material. 
The ashes measured later on were 7J- English feet deep at Suiza, and 
4J to 5 feet at Helvetia, the place to which the works were moved after 
the catastrophe. At Nil, more to the north-east, and nearer the mountain 
in the track of the main discharge of ashes, the depth was 10 to 12 feet. 
Still nearer the mountain the depths were much greater. At San 
Antonio the top of the chimney was all that remained uncovered, from 
which it is concluded that the deposit was about 14 metres in thickness. 
At the Baths of Sabina, near the foot of the mountain, the ashes were 
at least 30 feet thick, while nearer the crater the depth was not less 
than 100 feet, and may have been 200 feet in places. The ashes were 
carried widely over the district to the west and north-west, and even 
into remote parts of Mexico, such as Aca]3ulco and Colima. Mr. 
Gehrke, a partner in a firm of coffee merchants, who had large interests 
in the crops which were destroyed, and who visited the district soon 
after the eruption and measured the depths of the deposit, estimates 
the total amount in the district as not less than twenty thousand million 
tons, without reckoning that carried away to a distance by the wind, 
Sapper mentions maps showing the distribution in Mexico as having been 
made by more than one observer, but states they only agree in broad 
general features. It will be remembered that “ Krakatoa ” sunsets were 
observed in Europe in the autumn of 1902 and were attributed to 
the West Indian eruption in the previous May. There was always a 
difficulty in understanding this late appearance, and there is now, I 
believe, no reasonable doubt that they were due to Santa Maria. 
The ash deposits immediately after the eruption presented a pretty 
uniform surface, the old valleys, at any rate near the crater, having 
been in great measure, if not entirely, filled up. The surface was at 
first quite soft and incoherent, and difficult to walk on without sinking. 
Torrents of rain fell either at the time of or directly after the eruption, 
a large portion of which sank into and consolidated the new deposits, 
* Captain Saunders, of the Pacific Mail S.S. Newport. 
