Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/589

Rh carried also golden trumpets three palms in length. Gutierrez was attacked on one of the affluents of the river Grande, or Virillo, which flows into the gulf of Nicoya, in July, 1545, by about 3,000 natives, and himself and nearly all of his men were massacred. This battle resulted in the recovery, by the Indians, of 100,000 Castellanos in gold, which had been taken from them by Gutierrez.

Three leagues from the city of Granada, in the lake of Nicaragua, is the volcano Massaya, in the bowels of which a fiery liquid eternally boiled. The fact that the ebullition was perpetual, never discharging anything save smoke and flame, and never becoming reduced by evaporation, led a Dominican friar, named Bias del Castillo, to believe the molten mass to be a precious metal. "What a grand idea," thought he, "to draw melted gold from the bowels of the earth in buckets." At length, taking into his confidence other Spaniards he agreed to descend to the floor of the crater and endeavor if possible to obtain some of the precious liquid. For this purpose he carried with him a bucket-shaped piece of thick sheet iron attached to a long chain. Arrived at the floor of the crater he began paying out the chain. Although the situation was none of the coolest, and the good father imagined himself nearer the infernal regions than he ever expected to be before death, all went well. One hundred and fifty fathoms of the chain were paid out, but as soon as it reached the regions of fire below the bucket shrivelled, the chain melted for some distance, and the dream of the gold-drawers was over. The Spaniards passed the night, without needing the light of the sun, meditating upon the uncertainty of volcanic mining operations.