Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/488

468 feet. The variation of temperature between the nights and days, so peculiar to the high table lands, is not found here: the mean heat from the 1st of January to the 1st of July is 75° at night 63° : in the summer months the average may be taken at 10 degrees higher;—a moderate temperature for a city situated as this is in 14° 28' north latitude, and 92° 40' west longitude. The city of which I speak is the third capital which has existed within these last seventy-seven years. The original, which was erected at the declivity of the grand volcano, on the edge of a valley which fronted the Pacific, and contained about 7000 families, was destroyed by an earthquake in the year 1751. Being rebuilt a little further to the northward, in the romantic spot now called the Antigua, the same was destroyed, by a more tremendous convulsion, in 1775: although the greater part of the inhabitants were buried in the ruins, and the city was removed by order of the government to the spot on which it