THE VOLCANOES OF GUATEMALA—DISCUSSION. 
487 
from Washington. The Standard, for instance, published not a single word of it 
that I could find. The contemporaneous German papers were, however, better 
informed of an event of such magnitude, and, indeed, in Germany volumes have 
been published by Dr. Karl Sapper, of Tiibingen University, who had arrived 
in Guatemala the very night before the eruption broke out. 
In order to give you some idea of the magnitude of the eruption, I must men¬ 
tion that Captain Saunders, the commander of ^the Pacific Mail s.s. Newport, which 
was off the coast of Guatemala at the time, says that he measured the height of the 
column of matter ejected, by his instruments, from the bridge of his steamer, and it 
was between 17 and 18 miles high, as near as he could reckon. The stuff was 
ejected in a north-westerly direction, and the fall of the so-called ashes extended as 
far as Acapulco, in Mexico, fully 600 miles away. On the other hand, the sound of 
the explosions travelled in exactly a contrary direction, to the south-east, and 
at Punta Arenas, in Costa Rica, also 600 miles away, it was so loud that people 
there thought that a warship was firing her guns all day long, “ round the point.” 
The deposit of the so-called ash—in reality pumice-stone, granite pieces, and their 
smaller particles forming a kind of sand—was, of course, deeper nearer the crater, 
where it still lies over 200 feet in depth, but it rapidly diminished with distance, 
till, at the frontier with Mexico, about 60 miles away, it only measured 13 or 
14 inches, and from there on it tapered away gradually for 500 miles, until at 
Acapulco it was a slight layer of white dust. A rough calculation of what fell on 
Guatemalan territory alone—and it was only on that south-west corner that any stuff 
descended—shows the quantity to weigh well over 20,000 million tons, all ejected in 
those seventy-two terrible hours of complete darkness. And that is without taking 
into account the vast area in Mexico, thousands of square miles of deposit, inches 
deep. On our estate, “ Helvetia,” of which Dr. Anderson has shown you some 
interesting photos, and which has an area of about 5000 acres, the scoria lay from 
7 to 12 feet deep, as it is situate only about 6 miles from the crater, and the total 
quantity we had on our land, we reckon, is not less than 50 million tons. The 
coffee-trees, which I can liken in size and shape to a good-sized lilac bush, say from 
12 to 15 feet high, were just about buried in the ash, only a few twigs, leafless, of 
course, showing themselves above the surface. The houses and machinery had all 
been crushed flat; practically all the big forest trees still standing about on the 
estate were charred stumps, killed by lightning during the eruption ; and the scene 
of devastation of what was once one of the finest coffee plantations of Central 
America, or indeed of anywhere in the world, was terrible to see. At the time 
of the outbreak there were nearly a thousand people working on the property, and 
that more were not killed is entirely due to the courage and devotion of the 
manager, Mr. Moesly, who stuck to his post, and imperilled his own life fearlessly 
in order to bring his labourers into as safe a place as possible ; which was not very 
safe, however, as we lost some fifty lives as it is, amongst them that of the 
assistant-manager, Mr. Hartmann, who, with seventeen others, was crushed to 
death by a falling roof. 
Some months afterwards, on revisiting the place with Mr. Moesly, we found 
some signs of promise. For one thing, there was more of the coffee-trees visible 
above ground. The heavy rains, most remarkable in their intensity, and due to 
the condensation of the immense quantities of steam continually issuing from the 
crater, had beaten down the sand to a more compact mass, and washed away a 
great deal besides, so that to-day, after five years, we have only a deposit of from 
3 to 5 feet on the place, which we are anxious not to lose, as we find it useful 
in keeping down the growth of weeds, besides other advantages. When we looked 
at the place five years ago, and four months after the eruption, and saw a few leaves 
