Copy 1, Volume 1

The gallery of nature and art; or, a tour through creation and science. Comprising new and entertaining descriptions of the most surprising volcanoes, caverns, cataracts, whirlpools, waterfalls, earthquakes, and other wonderful and stupendous phenomena of nature. Forming a rich and comprehensive view of all that is interesting and curious in every part of the habitable world. By the Rev. E. Polehampton, and John M. Good, F.R.S. Illustrated by one hundred engravings / [Edward Thomas William Polehampton].

Polehampton, Edward (Edward Thomas William), 1777?-1830.

Date:: 1821

Credit: The gallery of nature and art; or, a tour through creation and science. Comprising new and entertaining descriptions of the most surprising volcanoes, caverns, cataracts, whirlpools, waterfalls, earthquakes, and other wonderful and stupendous phenomena of nature. Forming a rich and comprehensive view of all that is interesting and curious in every part of the habitable world. By the Rev. E. Polehampton, and John M. Good, F.R.S. Illustrated by one hundred engravings / [Edward Thomas William Polehampton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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To the middle of the eighteenth.century fields of sugar-canes and indigo extended between two rivulets, called Cuitimba and San Pedro. _ They were skirted by basaltic mountains, the structure of which seems to indicate, that all the country, in remote periods, has several times experienced the violent action of volcanoes. Thesé fields, irrigated by art, belonged to the estate of San Pedro de Jorullo, or Xorullo, one of the largest and most valuable in the country. In the month of June, 1759, fearful rumbling noises were accompanied with fre- quent shocks of ‘an earthquake, which succeeded each other at in- tervals for fifty or sixty days, and threw the inhabitants of the estate into the greatest consternation. From the beginning of the month of September, every thing seemed perfectly quiet, when in the night of the 28th of that month a terrible subterranean noise was heard anew. The frightened Indians fled to the mountains of Aguasarco. A space of three or four square miles, known by the name of Mal- pays, rose in the shape of a bladder. The boundaries of this rising are still distinguishable in the ruptured strata. The Malpays to- wards the edge is only 12 met. [13 yards] above the former level of the plain, calied Las playas de Jorullo; but the convexity of the ground increases progressively towards the centre, till it reaches the height of 160 met. [175 yards]. They who witnessed this grand catastrophe from the top of Agua- sarco assert, that they saw flames issue out of the ground for the space of more than half a league square ; that fragments of red-hot rocks were thrown to a prodigious height ; and that through a thick cloud of ashes, illumined by the volcanic fire, and resembling a stormy sea, the softened crust of the earth was seen to swell up. The rivers of Cuitimba and San Pedro then precipitated themselves into the burning crevices. The decomposition of the water contri- buted to reanimate the flames, which were perceptible at the city of Pascuoro, though standing on a very wide plain 1400 met. [1530 yards] above the level of the playas de Jorullo. Eruptions of mud, particularly of the strata of clay including decomposed nodules of basaltes with concentric layers, seem to prove, that subterranean waters had no small part in this extraordinary revolution. Thousands of small cones, only two or three yards high, which the Indians call ovens, issued from the raised dome of the Malpays. Though the- heat of these volcanic ovens has diminished greatly within these fif- teen years, according to the testimony of the Indians, I found the VOL, I. 21

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