We must not expect to find in native records any careful account, or even notice, of eruptions or earthquakes; if referred to at all, it will be much as in the quotation I have already given from the “Popul Vuh,” where Cabracan is said to be in the habit of shaking the mountains. In the three centuries and a half since Spain sent her educated sons to this land, with the exception of some three hundred earthquakes and half a hundred eruptions, we have no better record. While it is true that geology has existed as a science only within the present century, yet one would suppose that a catastrophe causing the death of hundreds of people and the destruction of much property would be entered with some minuteness in the annals of the time; but were it not for the masses and church processions to calm the trembling earth or appease the angry mountains, the worthy padres would perhaps have failed to notice these disturbances of Nature in their parochial records. Even the stories we have of the early experiences of the Spaniards in matters of vulcanology are so mingled with devils and unholy work that they are nearly incredible; and the stone volumes lying about the mountains, written by the hand of Nature, rather than the human chronicles, must be our guide. VOLCANOES. Stephens has described some of the Central American volcanoes from personal visits, but not with the pen of a geologist, and in the last years of the French Empire able geologists[61] redescribed some of the same peaks; but there are still more than a score of lofty cones that no geologist has ever ascended, and there are many rising from an almost unbroken forest, whose volcanic nature has not yet been fully determined. Even in the present age of physical research Central America has been sadly neglected; and we may express a hope that some young man is even now training his thews and sinews, and hardening his constitution by virtuous abstinence and careful exercise, as well as training his mind to interpret and his eye to see the rich harvest that here awaits the proper explorer. No feeble student need attempt the task. Death surely waits for him in the jungle, on the precipices, in the treacherous craters, even in the posada to which he brings his exhausted frame, should he be so foolhardy as to ascend a volcano in this tropical climate.