Another peculiar Nicaraguan religious custom is the baptism of the volcanoes, a ceremony which is believed by the superstitious to be very effective in keeping them in subjection and making them observe the proprieties of life. This observance is said to be as old as the Conquest, having originated after the first eruption succeeding the invasion of Nicaragua by the Spaniards, and is repeated on the anniversary of the last disturbance caused by each particular volcano. The priests of the nearest city take the affair in charge, and, followed by a large company of the faithful, ascend to the crater, and with great ceremony sprinkle holy water into it. Each of the volcanic peaks in Nicaragua has been repeatedly sanctified in this way except Momotombo, the grandest but most unregenerate of them all, who has never permitted a human foot to reach his summit or a human eye to look into his crater. Two hundred years ago, after old Tombo, as the master is familiarly called, had been acting very badly, three brave monks determined to try the effect of holy water upon him, and started for the summit with a large cross which they proposed to erect there; but they were never heard of again, and the people look upon the mountain with greater reverence. [Illustration: VOLCANOES OF AXUSCO AND MOMOTOMBO, FROM THE CATHEDRAL.] [Illustration: VOLCANO OF COSEQUINA, FROM THE SEA.] From the tower of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the city of Leon thirteen volcanoes can be seen, several of which are active. There are eighteen standing in a solemn procession around the lakes of Nicaragua and Managua. They are not so high as certain peaks in Guatemala or Costa Rica, but look higher from the fact that they rise immediately from the level of tide-water, and can be seen from the sea in their full grandeur, old Tombo looking to be about the height of Pike’s Peak as seen from Colorado Springs. This gigantic mountain rises boldly out of the waters of Lake Nicaragua, its bare and blackened summit, which has forbidden all attempts to scale its sides, being always crowned with a light wreath of smoke, attesting the perpetual existence of the internal fires which now and then break forth and cover its sides with burning floods. At its base are several hot sulphur springs, and at frequent intervals heavy rumbling sounds can be heard from within its walls. In the middle of the lake, only a few miles away, is an exact duplicate of the mountain; in miniature, however, being but one-fourth its size. This is called Momotombita, the three last letters expressing the diminutive. It forms an island, from which its peak rises a perfect cone. Its crater has been extinct for hundreds of years; but the island was a sacred place to the aborigines. In the forests which now cover it are the ruins of vast temples and gigantic idols hewn out of the solid rock. The last serious earthquake, in 1867, occurred without much damage to the city, whose walls have been several times shaken down in the