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Rh forms a pleasant contrast to the greater part of the desert landscape. The tourist may also have an excellent view of the palm-tree hacienda in the valley, which yields an income of about $10,000 a year. It is the largest in Michoacan.

The descent from the cone of Jorullo is easy, and the Puerta de la Playa can be reached in about an hour, the path being mostly down-grade. The appearance of Jorullo from the valley is worthy of mention. If the observer has time to geologize, let him speculate upon the original size of the plain before the eruption of 1759. This volcano is the culminating point of a narrow ridge about six miles long, and running due north and south. There are other hills of igneous rock on the eastern and northeastern borders of the plain. The valley of La Playa is now about a mile wide and six miles long. A rough estimate would make the breadth of it about eight miles before the elevation of Jorullo.

Alexander von Humboldt explored this region in 1803, and wrote a lengthy account of the great volcano in his journal. It is also described both in the Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne and in the Cosmos. The following extracts are taken from Otté and Dallas's translation of the Cosmos, vol. v, pages 291-300:

"In the series of Mexican volcanoes, . . . the most celebrated phenomenon is the elevation of the newly-produced Jorullo, and its effusion of lava. . . . The eruption in a broad and long-peaceful plain, in the former province of Michoacan, in the night from the 28th to the 29th of September, 1759, at a distance of more than 120 miles from any other volcano, was preceded for fully three months, namely, from the 29th of June in the same year, by an uninterrupted and subterranean noise. . ..

"The eruption of the new volcano, about three o'clock in the morning, was foretold the day before by a phenomenon which, in other eruptions, does not indicate their commencement, but their conclusion. At the point where the great volcano now stands there was formerly a thick wood of the Guayava. . ..