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Updated: June 22, 2025
It is built near the head of a subordinate bay, of the same name with itself, at the foot of the volcano of Conchagua, which rises between it and the sea, cutting it off from the ocean-breezes, and rendering it, in consequence, comparatively hot and unhealthy.
If your map be of sufficient scale and moderately exact, you will find represented there two gigantic volcanoes, standing like warders at the entrance of this magnificent bay. That on the south is called Coseguina, memorable for its fearful eruption in 1835; that on the north is named Conchagua or Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its top with verdure.
In the distance, rising alone in the very centre of the valley, we discerned the castellated Rock of Goascoran, behind which, we were told, nestled the village of Goascoran, where we intended passing the night. We had taken its bearings from the top of Conchagua, and were glad to find that the intervening country was level and open, chiefly savanna, or covered with scattered trees.
The whole valley of the river, and line of our reconnaissance, the Portillo of Caridad, the Rock of Goascoran, the Volcano of Conchagua, and the high islands of the Bay of Fonseca, were all included in the view.
Very few amateurs of any country, with all their advantages of instruction, could equal the skill of that poor dweller on the flank of the volcano of Conchagua; none certainly could surpass him in the delicacy and feeling of his execution.
Our observations at the top of Conchagua had signally confirmed them. We could distinctly make out the existence of a great valley extending due north, and our glasses revealed a marked depression in the Cordilleras, which in all the maps were represented as maintaining here the character of a high, unbroken range.
But when we stood on the top of Conchagua, on the 10th day of April, 1853, the existence of a pass through the mountains, as well as of that great transverse valley of which I have spoken, was only inferentially known.
The ascent of Conchagua was the most important incident of our stay in La Union, both in the excitements of the scramble and in the satisfactory nature of our observations from its summit. We left the port in the afternoon, with the view of passing the night in the highest hut on the mountain-side, so as to reach the summit early in the morning, and thus secure time for our observations.
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