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Miracles and Earthquakes. The Saints in Times of Ignorance. The Eruption of Jorullo. The Curse of the Capuchins. The Consequences of the Curse. The unfulfilled Curse. The Population of the Republic. Depopulation from 1810 to 1840. The Mixture of Whites and Indians not prolific. The pure Indians. The Meztizos. The White Population. Negroes and Zambos. The Jew and the Law of Generation.
The ground was well watered by artificial means, and produced abundant crops of indigo and sugar-cane. Thus Mr. Jorullo was a very thriving well-to-do sort of man.
The brink of the crater of the peak bears no resemblance to those of most of the other volcanoes which I have visited: for instance, the craters of Vesuvius, Jorullo, and Pichincha.
Wonderful and awful as were these phenomena, they were surpassed by the sudden opening of a chasm which vomited forth fire, and red-hot stones and ashes, until they accumulated in a range of six large mountain masses, one of which, now known as the volcano of Jorullo, attains an altitude of 1690 feet above the ancient level.
One of the De Saussure family, who was in Mexico a few years back, describes Jorullo as consisting of three terraces of basaltic lava, which have flowed one above another from a central orifice, the whole being surmounted by a cone of lapilli thrown up from the same opening, from which also later streams of lava have issued. The celebrated cascade of Regla is just behind the hacienda.
Out of a great chasm in the midst of those ovens there were thrown up six larger elevations, the highest being 1,640 feet above the level of the plain, 4,315 above sea level, and now constituting the principal volcano of Jorullo. The smallest of the six was 300 feet in height; the others of intermediate elevation.
In the same manner as the eruptions of Epomeo in the island of Ischia, and those of Jorullo in Mexico, have taken place in countries covered with trappean porphyry, ancient basalt, and volcanic ashes, so the peak of Teyde has raised itself amidst the wrecks of submarine volcanoes.
Old Cheops, king of Egypt, spent vast sums of money, many long years, and the labour of myriads of his subjects, in erecting the Great Pyramid as a monument to his memory. But Mr. Jorullo, without his having to lay down a single Mexican dollar, and without any labour, either of his own or of his servants, had a magnificent monument raised to his memory in a single night.
Until lately, the formation of the great cone of Jorullo was attributed to the same kind of action as the hornitos, but later travellers have established the fact that this is incorrect.
Guanaxuato is situated forty leagues north of the volcano of Jorullo, and sixty leagues north west of the volcano of Popocatepetl. In places nearer these two volcanoes, three leagues distant from Guanaxuato, the subterranean thunders were not heard.
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