water is fresh and wholesome, and the chief source of supply for the large town of Masaya, close at hand. The water is certainly very deep and the Indians say the lake is bottomless. There seems little reason to doubt that the basin of this lake was hollowed out by a stupendous volcanic explosion. Mr. Belt, who made a careful examination of the surrounding cliffs, found that they are composed of six different strata, which he describes as follows: "At the bottom are seen great cliffs of massive trachyte. Above this is an ash bed, then a bed of breccia, containing fragments of trachyte, then another bed of cinders, which looks like a rough sandstone, but is pisolitic, and contains pebbles of the size of a bean. This bed is surmounted by a bed of great interest. It is composed of fine tufa, in which is imbedded a great number of large angular fragments of trachyte, some of which are more than three feet in diameter. It is the last bed but one, the surface being composed of lightly coherent strata of tufaceous ash, worn into an undulating surface by the action of the elements. I believe there is but one explanation possible

of the origin of these strata, namely, that the great bed of trachyte at the base is an ancient lava bed; that this, perhaps long after it was consolidated, was covered by beds of ashes and scoriæ thrown out by a not far distant volcano, and that at last a great convulsion broke through the trachyte bed and hurled the fragments over the country along with dense volumes of dust and ashes. The angular blocks of trachyte imbedded in stratum No. 5, are exactly the same in composition as the great bed below, and in them I think we see the fragments of the rocks that once filled the perpendicular-sided hollow now occupied by the lake. Looking at the vast force required to hollow out the basin of the lake, by blasting out the whole contents into the air-distributing them over the country so that they have not been piled up in a volcanic cone round the vent, but lie in comparatively level beds—I cannot expect that this explanation will be readily received, nor should I myself have advanced it if I could in any other way account for the phe

nomena.

"Still, within historical times, there have

been volcanic outbursts, not of such magnitude, certainly, as was required to excavate the basin of the lake of Masaya, but still of sufficient extent to show that such an origin is not beyond the limits of possibility. Thus in the same line of volcanic energy, there was an eruption of the volcano of Coseguina, on the 20th of January, 1835, when dense volumes of dust and ashes and fragments of rocks, were hurled up in the air and deposited over the country around. The vast quantity of material thrown out by this explosion may be gathered from the fact that, 120 miles away, near the volcano of San Miguel, the dust was so thick that it was quite dark from four o'clock in the evening until nearly noon the next day; and even at that distance there was deposited a layer of fine ashes four inches deep. The noise of the explosion was heard at the city of Guatemala, 400 miles to the westward, and at Jamaica, 800 miles to the northeast."

A strong confirmation of the theory so modestly put forth by Mr. Belt, but apparently overlooked by him, is the statement of Squier, that the crater formed by the explosion of Cose

guina is several miles in circumference, and therefore not very much smaller than that of Masaya. He adds: "The quantity of matter ejected was incredible in amount. I am informed by the captain of a vessel which passed along the coast a few days thereafter, that the sea for fifty leagues was covered with floating masses of pumice, and that he sailed for a whole day through it without being able to distinguish but here and there an open space of water." A further confirmation is found in the fact that there are many other basins of the same character, though much smaller, within a radius of twenty miles of Masaya and some others in different parts of the Mirabios. There is one close to the city of Managua, which also contains fresh water, but in some of these basins the water is salt.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PACIFIC SLOPE.

THE Pacific slope is at once the grain-field and the garden of Nicaragua. It was densely populated, and in a high state of cultivation at the advent of the Spaniards. The old chroniclers were amazed at the fertility of the soil, and called it "a land of abundance, of good fruits and of honey and wax." Concerning the inhabitants it was said: "They had a great quantity of cotton cloths, and they held their markets in the open squares, where they traded. They had a manufactory where they made cordage of a sort of nequin, which is like carded flax; the cord was beautiful and stronger than that of Spain, and their cotton canvas was excellent. The Indians were very civilized in their way of life, like those of Mexico, for they were a people who had come from that country, and they had nearly the same language. They