486 
THE VOLCANOES OF GUATEMALA—DISCUSSION. 
of the volcanic phenomena which it presented, become so famous as to be almost a 
household word to geologists. The service which Dr. Anderson has rendered in 
visiting Guatemala and bringing before us so careful an account of the volcanic 
phenomena in that quarter, is one which I am sure the scientific public in England 
will highly appreciate. 
Mr. Maudslay : I can add very little to what Dr. Anderson has told us. I 
certainly do know these volcanoes very well, having ascended the Volcan de Fuego 
once and Agua three times. I quite agree with what Dr. Anderson has said about the 
destruction of the first city of Guatemala. It must have been a cloudburst, and not 
a volcanic eruption, that destroyed it. We must remember that Guatemala—the 
city of Guatemala, as it was called even in those times—was a very, very small 
affair indeed. The wife of the conqueror Pedro de Alvarado lost her life in that 
cloudburst, and no doubt it made a great impression upon the people in the 
country, but I have gone carefully through the accounts of it, and it is quite clear 
that it had rained very hard for three or four days, and that it was a wave of mud 
from the slope of the mountain that overwhelmed that small town. The few 
inhabitants took refuge in the chapels, where they were most of them smothered. 
You have seen from some of these photographs the very beautiful outlines of the 
volcanoes in that country, and I do not think one really could exaggerate the beauty 
of Agua and Fuego and the lake of Atitlan. The view at sunset or at sunrise from 
the top of Agua or Fuego, with the sun tinting that long line of peaks, is exquisite. 
And the cloud effects are unrivalled. It is extremely interesting to me to see these 
photographs of Santa Maria, because the last time I saw it it was a perfect cone, 
and Quezaltenango was then a flourishing city. I can do no more than congratulate 
Dr. Anderson upon the work he has done, and thank him for the photographs he 
has shown us. 
Mr. Ascoli remarked that he had been in the country at the time of the 
eruption and of the previous earthquake, but that the details were too numerous to 
go into that evening. A feature of the eruption not mentioned by Dr. AndersoD, and 
which might tend to elucidate the mystery of the destruction of Ciudad Vieja, was 
the following : During great activity of the crater, at night-time, about a week 
after the first outburst, the village of Santa Maria, situated on the south-eastern 
flank of the volcano, was awakened by a terrific roar, which continued during 
several hours. On investigation the following morning, it was seen that a 
tremendous torrent of water had swept down the mountain-side from near the 
summit, and had cut a channel about 17 feet deep and 33 yards wide from the 
road about a quarter of a mile below the village, carrying everything before it. Up 
to the present no satisfactory explanation has been given as to the origin of this 
torrent, for on no part of the mountain-side is there room for any quantity of water 
to have collected. It is surmised that the occurrence was due to the rapid con¬ 
densation of steam emitted from the crater ; but this seems hardly compatible with 
the immense quantity of water which descended the mountain-side. 
Mr. A. H. Gehrke : The pleasure we have all had to-night in hearing Dr. 
Tempest Anderson, and viewing the magnificent photographs that he has shown us, 
is in my own case greatly enhanced in finding some notice taken at last of one of 
the greatest volcanic eruptions of modern times, which, in respect of its intensity 
and scope, considerably overshadows those other and much more celebrated 
eruptions which took place in the same year at Martinique and St. Vincent. 
True, the loss of life was, fortunately, not so great as at Martinique, though we 
probably lost more than two thousand in Guatemala, but the exact number will 
never be known. It was a remarkable fact, to us of the Brilish colony, that the 
Press in England barely noticed the eruption, some only mentioning it as a rumour 
