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It is entirely of these cindery fragments heaped up with marvellous rapidity round the orifice that the volcano itself is first formed. It may, as in the case of Jorullo in Mexico in 1759, form a cone several hundred feet high in less than a day.
What is rather remarkable, these five, together with Jorullo, all lie nearly in a straight line running east and west. The tracts of country which these volcanoes have desolated with their lavas are called by the Mexicans the "Malpays." The most remarkable of these mountains is Popocatepetl.
Those which for months preceded the upheaval of the volcano of Jorullo, will recur to your remembrance. For about a month before the great mud eruption from Tunguragua on 4th February 1797, already described, there proceeded from the interior of that mountain noises of the most fearful kind. These would occur suddenly in the midst of perfect silence.
Every extraordinary event in nature is ascribed to the exercise of supernatural power on the part of the clergy or the most holy images of the Church. The fires of Jorullo have ceased to burn for half a century. The central crater that was eventually formed, and the numerous little orifices of fire, have long since become cold, and all the evidences of an active fire have passed away.
Of all the volcanoes which I have visited, that of Jorullo, in Mexico, is the only one that is more difficult to climb than the Peak, because the whole mountain is covered with loose ashes. M. Le Gros showed us the place where captain Baudin was nearly killed when he visited the Peak of Teneriffe.
Several are active volcanoes; the most curious being that of Jorullo, surrounded by miniature mountains emitting smoke and fire, and presenting the wildest scene of utter desolation. They form pinnacles of the great range of the Andes and the Rocky Mountains.
Or, again, among formations of a different class, the craters and crater-cones; might not objects as large as Monte Nuovo or Jorullo come into existence in many regions without any one being the wiser?
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