EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES. 
405 
her in, bound hand and foot and with a stone fast to her 
neck. The next day, if the child appeared upon the sur¬ 
face and the tremors continued, another victim was cast 
into the lake with the same ceremonies. 
“Even in the years 1861 and 1862, when I visited 
these towns, they told me, though with much reserve, 
that the people of Cojutepeque and Chinameca kept this 
barbarous custom to prevent the failure of the fish.” 
Near the end of November, 1879, a series of earth¬ 
quakes shook the lake (more than six hundred were 
counted), and on Jan. 11, 1880, the waters had risen 
about four feet. On the next day, between half-past 
four and half-past seven in the afternoon, 13,790,000 
cubic metres of water escaped from the outlet of the lake, 
making a stream of greater volume than the Seine at 
Paris or the Rhine at Basle. The little river Jiboa, 
which received this torrent, did great damage to the 
plantations on its banks. 
As is usual, the earthquakes were accompanied by the 
discharge of sulphuretted hydrogen, now in such quan¬ 
tities as to be very unpleasant at the city of San Salvador. 
On the 9th of January there appeared floating on the sur¬ 
face numerous flakes of a black foam composed of ferric 
sulphide, which in contact with flame burned with a 
slight explosion. On the 20th, at eleven o’clock in the 
evening, a great disturbance was noticed in the midst of 
the lake, and the next morning a pile of rocks was seen, 
from whose midst arose a column of vapor. For more 
than a month this vapor column was visible, and the 
pile of rocks near the centre of the lake increased, while 
the water was heated and the sulphurous vapors extended 
over all the neighborhood. Beyond this no permanent 
