Page:Appleton's Guide to Mexico.djvu/260

232 " But in passing from Ario on the steep declivity over Aguasarco, into the level of the old plain of Jorullo, we diminish the absolute elevation in this short distance by from 3,850 to 4,250 feet. The roundish convex part of the upheaved plain is about 12,790 feet in diameter, so that its area is more than seven square miles. The true volcano of Jorullo and the five other mountains which rose simultaneously with it upon the same fissure, are so situated that only a small portion of the Malpais lies to the east of them.

"Toward the west, therefore, the number of hornitos is much larger; and when, in early morning, I issued from the Indian huts of the Playas de Jorullo

or ascended a portion of the Cerro del Mirador, I saw the black volcano projecting very picturesquely above the innumerable white columns of smoke of the 'little ovens' (hornitos). Both the houses of the Playas and the basaltic hill Mirador are situated upon the level of the old non-volcanic, or, to speak