Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/311

Rh physically incapable; and seeing that they did not know any particular path, I left them and went alone. At eleven o'clock, or three hours from the village of Nindiri, I reached the high point at which we were aiming; and from this point I expected to look down into the crater of the volcano; but there was no crater, and the whole surface was covered with gigantic masses of lava, and overgrown with bushes and scrub trees. I waited till my guides came up, who told me that this was the Volcano of Masaya, and that there was nothing more to see. The alcalde insisted that two years before he had ascended with the cura, since deceased, and a party of villagers, and they all stopped at this place. I was disappointed and dissatisfied. Directly opposite rose a high peak, which I thought, from its position, must command a view of the crater of the other volcano. I attempted to reach it by passing round the circumference of the mountain, but was obstructed by an immense chasm, and returning, struck directly across. I had no idea what I was attempting. The whole was covered with lava lying in ridges and irregular masses, the surface varying at every step, and overgrown with trees and bushes. After an hour of the hardest work I ever had in my life, I reached the point at which I aimed, and, to my astonishment, instead of seeing the crater of the distant volcano, I was on the brink of another.

Among the recorded wonders of the discoveries in America, this mountain was one; and the Spaniards, who in those days never stopped half way in any matter that touched the imagination, called it El Infierno de Masaya, or the Hell of Masaya. The historian, in speaking of Nicaragua, says, "There are burning mountains in this province, the chief of which is Masaya, where the natives at certain times offered up maids, throwing them into it, thinking by their lives to appease the fire, that it might not destroy the country, and they went to it very cheerful;" and in another place he says, "Three leagues from the city of Masaya is a small hill, flat and round, called Masaya, being a burning mountain, the mouth of it being half a league in compass, and the depth within it 250 fathoms. There are no trees nor grass, but birds build without any disturbance from the fire. There is another mouth like that of a well about a bowshot over, the distance from which to the fire is about 150 fathoms, always boiling up, and that mass of fire often rises, and gives a great light, so that it can be seen at a considerable distance. It moves from one side to the other, and sometimes roars so loud that it is dreadful, yet never casts up anything but smoke and flame. The liquor never ceasing at the bottom, nor its boiling, imagining the same to be gold, F. Blase de