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We have seen that mud is a not uncommon product, due to the mingling of water with volcanic dust, while water alone is occasionally emitted, of which we have a marked instance in the Volcan de Agua, of Guatemala, already mentioned. As regards mud flows, we may specially instance the first outflow from Mont Pelee, that by which the Guerin sugar works were overwhelmed.
On approaching Arequipa the sunset effect on the bright and vari-hued rock strata and scoriæ, backed by the grand Volcan Misti, 19,000 feet high, made a marvellously beautiful picture, the most beautiful of its kind ever seen by me, and showing how wonderfully coloured landscapes may be without the presence of vegetation of any kind.
For two hours or more we followed that ridge, and as we went through the silence of the haunted volcan, and the loneliness of its eternal snows, it seemed to me that my spirit entered into the spirit of my quarry, and that with its eyes I saw all that was passing in his heart.
At Santa Isabel, including Volcan, with a population of two hundred eighty-four, the reservation of twenty-nine thousand eight hundred forty-four acres is patented, but the report says it is "mountainous; stock land; no water." At San Jacinto, with a population of one hundred forty-three, the two thousand nine hundred sixty acres are "mostly poor; very little water, and not patented."
Our view to the northward, however, was obstructed by hills and forests, and our ascent of El Volcan failed to give us a view of the Pass, which we knew must now be near at hand. We descended, therefore, and resumed our course, anxiously, it is true, but with few of the serious misgivings which had beset us at Caridad.
This was the volcan Xaca, or the Queen, and though it is not so lofty as its sisters Orizaba, Popo, and Ixtac, to my mind it is the loveliest of them all, both because of its perfect shape, and of the colours, purple and blue, of the fires that it sends forth at night or when its heart is troubled.
We were now at the foot of the "divide," and close to the pass, if such existed, of which we were in search. Immediately in front rose a high peak, destitute of trees, which the people called El Volcan. It had deep breaks or valleys on either side, evidently those of the streams to which I have alluded.
The Chevalier then found, in the mountain of Santa Venere, an extinct volcano; and proceeds in his Memoir to give some explanation for those appearances, as follows: «Je ne pus pas douter que cette montagne ne fût le volcan que je cherchois, et qui avoit répandus ses laves
Leaving our mules here, H. and myself clambered up amongst rough and angular rocks, strewn in wildest disorder, to the bare and rugged summit of El Volcan. From this commanding position the view was unobstructed all the way back to the Pacific.
The great peaks of the Andes likewise suffer, such as Volcan Misti at Arequipa, nearly 20,000 feet above the sea, but from its base only 12,000 feet. Then imagine Orizaba peak at once soaring 16,000 feet above the city, not one of a chain or range, but proudly standing alone in her radiant beauty.
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